Cricket in America

As sporting upsets go, the USA beating Pakistan wouldn’t usually come as a surprise to many. However, when that sport is cricket, it might be time to acknowledge that something strange is brewing stateside. 

How an American team of largely part-time players (one of them’s a software engineer) managed to defeat a cricket superpower is one story. The other is that the T20 World Cup match took place in Dallas, Texas, in a country where cricket has traditionally been an alien concept. But, as Bob Dylan once mused, the times they are a-changin’ and, out of nowhere, a baseball nation is swapping home runs for sixes and turning its attention to a different type of bat and ball sport.

Aside from hosting this summer’s tournament, alongside the far more familiar participating region of the West Indies, America is (at the time of writing) now in its second Major League Cricket season – its equivalent of the lucrative Indian Premier League or England’s The Hundred. They’re also preparing for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, where cricket is a confirmed inclusion. So, like how Major League Soccer has developed, the domestic competition is attracting star players, coaches and wealthy investors in a bid to fast-track its development.

Growing pains

“Cricket is not popular in America. Very few know anything about it. However, over the past three years, we’ve had multiple developers reach out about building a stadium,” Oswego village administrator Daniel Di Santo tells Cloud. “Our congresswoman is Lauren Underwood, so we gave her team a tour of where the stadium would go and the response was: ‘Do you mean the insects or the sport?’”

Oswego is 40 miles west of Chicago and is home to just 36,000 people. However, it’s the fastest-growing area in the state, with a sizable Indian-American population and a glut of land ripe for development. Around a year ago, Oswego resident and owner of Breybourne Cricket Club Paresh Patel acquired the land to build a stadium and his timing couldn’t have been better. Within weeks, the International Olympic Committee announced that cricket would feature in a US-hosted Olympic Games. Then Major League Cricket confirmed it was looking for a Chicago-area franchise. Finally, the Illinois General Assembly passed a resolution encouraging high schools to include cricket as an official sport.

“If you’d called me a year ago, I wouldn’t have believed any of it,” says Di Santo, aged 42, whose exposure to the world’s second most-watched sport after soccer extends to “watching a few YouTube videos”. Now it’s hoped the planned stadium – with two restaurants and a hotel – will qualify for international cricket, meaning England or India could visit one day. “The belief is there is real money in having a stadium big enough to attract international stars,” adds Di Santo. “The opposition comes from the proposed stadium being built next door to a residential neighbourhood, but Paresh has told us cricket is a gentleman’s sport.”

Not everyone is convinced. “Can you imagine having professional meetings with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies with construction sounds, cheering and announcements going on in the background?” resident Dawn DeRosa told a recent Oswego village meeting. “We would have strangers walking through our yards, urinating in our pond and throwing up in our flowerbeds.”

The D.C. universe

Washington Freedom is one of Major League Cricket’s founding franchises and, just as England footballer Wayne Rooney was drawn to D.C. in Major League Soccer, now another former pro has arrived in the capital – ex-Australian skipper Ricky Ponting. 

The main investor behind the team is Indian-American businessman Sanjay Govil (reported net worth: $1.8 billion). “Ricky’s international stardom brings with it a global audience, as his fans will be following his success in the United States,” Govil tells Cloud, admitting he is relying on “pockets of strong expat support” to fill a planned 12,000-seater stadium. “While it’s challenging to predict exact numbers, we anticipate a significant turnout once we have a D.C.-area presence and facilities.”

More ambitious is a belief that cricket can pull fans across from a sport as American as peanut butter and jelly. “There is a natural and fundamental overlap between cricket and baseball,” says Govil. “The concept of pitchers, catchers, batters and runs will help fans pick up the sport. While the terminology may differ, many basic concepts are the same.” As for the fear of raucous fans, Govil adds: “Like any other sport, we’re committed to maintaining a respectful, sportsman-like culture that values safety and good spirits in equal measure.”

The history books

America isn’t a total stranger to cricket. The website for USA Cricket even claims that “America has one of the richest cricketing histories” of any country. That is slightly dubious, but there are some notable highlights. In 1754, Benjamin Franklin brought a cricket rulebook over from England. The very first international cricket match took place in New York (America versus Canada, with the Canadians winning) in 1844. In the early 1900s, Bart King from Philadelphia led the first-class bowling averages in England. At one time, there were up to 1,000 cricket clubs across the country. 

In 1996, Compton Cricket Club was even formed in South Central Los Angeles as a social experiment to help reform gang members. The man coaching the team was ex-England international Paul Smith, so what are his views of cricket’s latest attempt to crack America? “I remember Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Brian Lara playing in Los Angeles, Houston and New York in 2015 and, despite three massive stadiums in three major cities, nobody went. With the greatest respect, 99% of Americans didn’t know who the hell they were. Judge American cricket in 10 years on how many are playing the sport. You can build stadiums, but what the legacy is I do not know.” 

Still, the summer of 2024 will be fondly remembered for changing the narrative about the sport with American audiences. The hope now is that the national team will go further at the 2026 T20 World Cup and shine in front of home crowds at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, where you could say it’s being included for the first time. The last time was at the 1900 Games where only England and France competed and, well, that’s just not cricket. 

Illustrations - Harry Milburn