Cricket stuck in big sleep as baseball dreams on

Americans have serious problems with the notion that a match can go on for five days and still end in a draw

Bernard Shaw – the witty Irish playwright, not the CNN anchorman – said that Britain and America were divided by a common language. And visits to the United States never fail to remind me of the truth of this. For example, the New York Times on Friday contained a long article about the Conservative Party leadership contest. Iain Duncan Smith, it reported, was an old-school right-winger who likes to wear "regimental ties and suspenders". Which makes him the perfect chap to lead the Tories, I'd say.

Anyway, this business of a common language dividing our two countries applies particularly to sport. Here's the New York Times again, this time reporting a basketball match which took place last Tuesday on the streets of Harlem. In an admirable effort to keep basketball in touch with its roots, a street league has been founded and the top players make guest appearances.

Last week it was the turn of the Los Angeles Lakers centre Shaquille O'Neal. "Greg Marius, the founder and chief executive of the league, was pleased," reported the Times. "This wasn't Earl (The Goat) Manigault, plucking a quarter off the top of the backboard, but it worked."

Sorry? It is actually quite alarming to understand almost every word of a sentence, and yet to have not the slightest clue what is being said. All one can do is draw consolation from the certainty that Americans would struggle just as much to understand why someone called Shane Warne should bowl with a leg-slip positioned for the mistimed tickle. Indeed, I have had a lot of fun over the years trying to explain cricket to American friends. Even those who profess to understand it have serious problems with the notion that a match can go on for five days and still end in a draw. After all, there is at present a great deal of concern about baseball taking too long, the average game lasting an unacceptable three hours and 10 minutes.

It is a pleasure, during this brief stay in the baking Big Apple, to be reacquainted with America's great summer sport. Some Brits like to deride baseball as being little more than glorified rounders, or at best as cricket's mutant second cousin, but for proof that it is full of drama look no further than the movies. Baseball, rivalled only by boxing, has arguably inspired the greatest sporting movies. Whereas cricket's relationship with celluloid is unimpressive, to say the least. Say what you like about Field of Dreams and The Natural, they were a thousand times better than The Final Test, which starred Jack Warner long before he joined Dock Green nick and was truly painful to watch, the cerebral equivalent of ducking into a Glenn McGrath bouncer.

Moreover, we would be wise not to deride baseball from our side of the Atlantic, still less to ignore it, but to learn from it. Somehow, it manages to change with the times yet remain appealingly homely. The kits, or uniforms, are sacrosanct, and certainly not splattered with the name of a different sponsor each season. Camden Yards, where the Baltimore Orioles play, was built only a couple of years ago but in the intimate style of an old-fashioned ball-park. Those new-fangled things, floodlights, have only recently been installed at Wrigley Field, venerable home of the Chicago Cubs.

So the spirit of Norman Rockwell is alive and well in America's ball-parks, except when it comes to remuneration. But there is a lesson for cricket even in the absurd sums paid to modern ball players. Because guess what? There ain't no corruption in baseball. What is there to gain when you're earning $25m (£18m) a year, like the Texas Rangers short-stop Alex Rodriguez? Not that anyone is going to pay even a 20th of that to Alec Stewart, say, but the principle is clear: maximise the legitimate rewards and you'll minimise the illicit ones.

Incidentally, rather satisfyingly for those who think the Rangers threw obscene money at Rodriguez to tempt him away from the Seattle Mariners, the Rangers currently languish at the bottom of the American League standings (western division) while the Mariners are top. But the Australian cricket team of baseball, the Manchester United, remains the New York Yankees, winners of three World Series out of the last four, and seemingly on course to do it again.

The Yankees and Man Utd, of course, are commercial partners, a baseballing Spectre and a footballing Smersh, united in their bid for world domination.

And they are not unalike on the field. The Yankees have great players, such as the pitcher Roger Clemens and the short-stop Derek Jeter, but no individual is allowed to be bigger than the team. At Old Trafford, the same is true of Beckham, Giggs, Keane and co. Also, the Yankees, like United, have a great manager, in Joe Torre. But what will become of them when Torre retires? That's what I, and doubtless the Man Utd board, would like to know.

b.viner@independent.co.uk