Why baseball writing is better than cricket writing
They've got better stories to tell. Here's a discussion between Joe Posnanski and Bill James. This bit's from Bill:

Back when I was a young wannabe sportswriter I sat in the press box for a game: Aug. 12, 1989. The Royals and Orioles are tied 3-3 going into the bottom of the ninth. ... It's first-and-third, two out, George Brett at the plate. Scottie McGregor is on the mound. McGregor and Brett were high school teammates, but McGregor was the kind of pitcher who gave Brett fits -- a lefty who throws off-speed stuff; Brett in his career was 12 for 54 against McGregor, .222, and he didn't hit anybody LIKE that very well.

But McGregor has pitched 8 2/3 innings and is weakening, so Earl Weaver replaces McGregor with Tim Stoddard, and Brett is hitting around .400 (I think he was still over .400 at the time) ... so Weaver intentionally walks Brett, bringing up Amos Otis with the bases loaded.

Stoddard's first two pitches miss, and it's 2-0. From that moment on, Amos Otis was GOING to walk. A walk wins the game; Stoddard has poor control, Amos is up 2-0. ... he's taking a walk. A long, long battle ensues, Otis fouling off pitch after pitch, the crowd roaring on every pitch. Must have been 9, 10 pitches. It's what makes baseball, baseball. Finally Stoddard misses outside, and the Royals win the game.

Why do I enjoy this story? Part of it is probably that Bill James is a top-notch writer. But part of it comes from the drama of the situation. Games of cricket that finish like this go down as all-time greats. The 1999 World Cup semi-final, the Tied Tests, etc. Baseball, because of its lower scoring, provides loads of stories like this every season. It's a vast goldmine of anecdotes, providing the tension-of-the-moment, "What's going to happen NOW?" gripping theatre that cricket only provides every couple of years. I don't even watch Major League Baseball^*, I don't care about the Royals or the Orioles, but for a couple of paragraphs there, I cared about what happened that night in 1989 in a baseball game between those two teams.

^*I would if I had the relevant channels on the TV.

Cricket just doesn't measure up in comparison. Instead of having a huge bank of close finishes to fall back on, we have a mini-battle in the middle of a game, a long innings under pressure, and so forth. There's drama, but it's almost always drawn out and it rarely has the finality of the baseball story that starts "bottom of the ninth, two out".

I hope my one baseball/cricket reader has found this post interesting.