"Today, many Americans dismiss cricket as an elitist game played by girlie-men. That may be because the game is superficially slow. Or because the players still tend to dress in traditional whites and, during four-day international matches, break for tea. Or maybe it's because, in a sporting world that seems to have turned increasingly nasty, the game's code of sportsmanship remains rectitudinously strict. (The recent unpleasantness during Pakistan's tour of England—an umpire ruled that Pakistan had doctored the ball; Pakistan staged an after-tea protest; the umpires declared the game a forfeit—set off a crisis that made baseball's steroids scandal seem subdued.) But in most of the former Commonwealth, cricket is a game of the masses. This is especially true in cricket-mad South Asia, where last year's match between India and Pakistan was hailed as a sign of warming in the chilly relationship between the two countries (until, that is, India suggested it would side against Pakistan in the ball-scuffing affair). And most cricketers would argue that the game is far more dynamic, and dangerous, than baseball. For starters, a cricket ball is heavier—by half an ounce—than the ball used in the American game. With a core of cork, sheathed in layers of twine and cork shavings, and wrapped in a bright red leather casing (it is sometimes called a "cherry"), a cricket ball is a fearsome projectile when launched at a batsman. Unlike in baseball, the bowler (the equivalent of the pitcher) is in full flight after sprinting for up to 30 paces before launching the ball. Nor is it usually bowled through the air; that is a "full toss" and considered easy to hit. Far more often, the ball is bounced off the ground, whose grass has usually been trimmed and rolled to a concrete-like hardness, and it may rise toward the batsman's head as a "bouncer" or "bumper." Balls have been clocked at 95 miles per hour or more (as fast as a major-league fastball); before the introduction of safety helmets, in the 1970s, it was not uncommon for batsmen to be felled, or seriously injured, by bouncers."