• Welcome to the Cricket Web forums, one of the biggest forums in the world dedicated to cricket.

    You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join the Cricket Web community today!

    If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us.

What is the most difficult sport to play at a high standard?

stephen

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Seriously though, if I was to judge this based on how an average person would do thrown into one of these sports with six months of training.

Rugby (league/union) is not that challenging. It's demanding physically, but it's honestly not that challenging to play. If you can survive the physical side you would at least be able to have a small positive impact.
Tennis is crazy difficult to play at high level. On a par with cricket batting. No way you'd get anywhere near returning a 200kph serve.
Soccer is the easiest after the rugby codes. It requires endurance and ball handling skills, but the ball is relatively large and slow moving. You could at least act as a blocker and be a warm body on the field.
Cricket would be hard. You could catch but not bat or bowl to a reasonable standard. Bowling technique is something that basically has to be learned early in life. It's very hard for someone who hasn't been raised on the sport to coordinate it correctly. Batting against pace would be near impossible.
Baseball would be harder than cricket, though you could probably have a small positive impact in the field. You wouldn't pitch or hit to a reasonable standard. You might be able to milk a walk if the pitcher is incompetent.

Basically no sport would allow a regular person to walk into elite competition and have the slightest chance of being particularly useful. Everything happens too quickly, with too much force and requires years of training to be competent at.
 

Daemon

Request Your Custom Title Now!
Was thinking about this - have concluded it might just be basketball.

There’s not enough players for you to hide and not be much of a loss.

You’d be up against giants.

Never get a single rebound.

Never score a single point.

Elite basketball demands you be genetically gifted, incredibly athletic, fast and also very skilful, moreso than other sports imo.
 

OverratedSanity

Request Your Custom Title Now!
Was thinking about this - have concluded it might just be basketball.

There’s not enough players for you to hide and not be much of a loss.

You’d be up against giants.

Never get a single rebound.

Never score a single point.

Elite basketball demands you be genetically gifted, incredibly athletic, fast and also very skilful, moreso than other sports imo.
A completely non skilled giant who's never played the sport before could in theory grab a few boards and end up being a little more than useless. Golf is the right answer imo. Athleticism wouldnt help, so a noob probably wouldnt even get the ball near the hole in 30 shots.
 

Daemon

Request Your Custom Title Now!
Need to draw some parameters here though, are we talking how a total noob, a weekend player, etc would fare?

Or is it about how demanding/multi faceted etc the sport is?
 

Arachnodouche

International Captain
No layman can front up to elite opponents after a six-month crashcourse in any sport. The disparity in skill, genetics, commitment, etc would be far too great.

If you mean a contest between average Joes at the end of the deadline that is of passable quality and within the laws of the sport, then I imagine football and rugby might be easier to pick up than the rest. Mostly because among other skills, they also greatly depend on relatively "primitive" movements i.e. running, kicking, tackling. Of course there's incredible specialization even within those movements, but they might be easier to teach to newbies who've already built up some base of fitness through their lives.
 

Gob

International Coach
I don't know how to compete with other sports but difficulty of playing cricket also greatly varies from the aspect you are trying to master. From personal experiences, bowling offspin is the easiest. On a deteriorating wicket, I think I can at least not be a complete joke at the highest level especially if I'm bowling to left handers.

Batting is the hardest discipline to master because I honestly can't bat when the ball travels I assume over 120 kmph.
 

TheJediBrah

Request Your Custom Title Now!
A completely non skilled giant who's never played the sport before could in theory grab a few boards and end up being a little more than useless. Golf is the right answer imo. Athleticism wouldnt help, so a noob probably wouldnt even get the ball near the hole in 30 shots.
30 shots? Unless you have a severe physical disability I can't see how that's possible
 

Burgey

Request Your Custom Title Now!
Basically no sport would allow a regular person to walk into elite competition and have the slightest chance of being particularly useful.
I think this is pretty much true for all sports too, tbh. Which makes me particularly pissed off when sports like boxing allow numpty n00bs to have a crack at real fighters for the sake of a pay day.
 

Fuller Pilch

Hall of Fame Member
It isn't hard for noobs to get pars or single bogeys on regular courses (admittedly pro courses and greens/pin placements are much harder).
 

Burgey

Request Your Custom Title Now!
bowling offspin is the easiest. On a deteriorating wicket, I think I can at least not be a complete joke at the highest level especially if I'm bowling to left handers.

Batting is the hardest discipline to master because I honestly can't bat when the ball travels I assume over 120 kmph.
Bowling offspin (in fact, fingerspin in general) barely passes the Stephen Hawking test, it's that easy.
 

Burgey

Request Your Custom Title Now!
Referring to Gallen?
Initially yeah, but not so much now he's had a number of fights, and it hasn't been for massive dough in the scheme of things, nor has he been fighting current champions.

Was more thinking about this Logan Paul idiot fighting Mayweather. I mean, come on ffs. I despise Mayweather as a bloke but it debases the sport for him to fight this ****. He's 50-0 and this **** gets a walk up start to fight him when he's had one fight, and that was against some other YouTuber ffs. The **** should be closer to fighting me than an ATG like Mayweather. It's embarrassing. I hope he splatters him across the venue inside two minutes. Just so ****ed up for fighters on the way up to see this sort of **** while they're busting their balls to get a decent pay day.
 

Top