Rounders

Rounders (ir. Cluiche corr) is a ball sport (batting game) from the British Isles, called baseball as early as 1744 in the children's book A Little Pretty Pocketbook. Likewise, Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths calls it Ball mit Freistätten (or Das englische Baseball) in his 1796 collection Spiele zur Übung und Erholung des Körpers und Geistes.

It has an (almost) square playing field with 4 times, "bases", which must be rounded. The cue ball, known as a sliotar, is also used in the Gaelic sports of hurling and camogie, in addition to rounders. The rules also seem very similar to the American game. The difference in the ground plan: In English rounders, the fourth run is not identical to home plate. The complete track thus results in an open pentagon. (In Ireland, however, the boundary is square. In the description in GutsMuths there were as many times as there were players in a team). In German sports literature, cricket and batting are mostly considered the ancestors of baseball. But the differences between these two games and baseball are significantly greater than between rounders and baseball. Today, even American athletes recognize the striking similarity between rounders and softball.

Rounders is predominantly played by children and youngsters, especially in schools (in Great Britain about 2 million). Only since 1943 there is a British governing body, the National Rounders Association. In Ireland the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) is responsible.

There is no evidence of international competitions. In Great Britain regional leagues exist (one of them for Wales), first "international matches" (between England, Wales and the Isle of Man) are played since 1977. National championships exist in Great Britain for school teams of different age groups, in Ireland also for adults (= clubs). In addition there are tournaments in which both national and club teams take part.