The Spin | Reborn in the USA: has cricket finally cracked the American market?

Importance Score: 65 / 100 🔴

Looking southward from the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, one can almost envision the former cricket ground nestled beneath what is now the South Seaport. With a touch of imagination, the present-day crowd enjoying the area’s bars, clubs and eateries could be perceived as successors to the New Yorkers who attended a match here between a local side and a London XI back in 1751. The landscape of modern Manhattan is, in part, built upon these cricket fields, concealed under city streets amongst former farms and housing which were cleared away to make way for towering buildings. Another pitch lies beneath Central Park, and a third is located under the NYU Langone medical center, which, in 1844, was the site of Canada’s 23-run triumph over the USA in what many consider the inaugural international fixture in any sport.

The Historical Rise and Fall of Cricket in America

Ever since its decline during the Civil War, over 160 years ago, there have been recurrent aspirations to resurrect American cricket. Its downturn stemmed from inadequate playing fields, equipment, and coaching, compounded by the burgeoning popularity of baseball, America’s favorite pastime. Baseball offered two chief benefits: it was simpler to play, requiring only a bat, ball, four bases, and a field; and it presented greater financial prospects for skilled players. Numerous professional cricketers transitioned to baseball. The Wright brothers, George and Harry—both former players for St. George’s Cricket Club in New York, where their father was the groundsman—were founding figures in the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team. Both are celebrated in the Hall of Fame, with Harry still recognized as the “father of the game.” Early promoters, such as AG Spalding, himself a former cricketer, marketed baseball as the distinctly American sport, emphasizing patriotism over the inescapably English associations of cricket.

Despite this, cricket endured into the 20th century in certain enclaves within North America, particularly around Philadelphia, where it became a sport favored by country clubs. However, the USA was excluded from the International Cricket Council (ICC), the game’s new global regulatory body, founded in 1909 as the Imperial Cricket Conference. By the time the USA gained admission to the ICC in 1965, cricket had dwindled to a minority sport, enjoyed mainly by expatriates on small areas of parkland.

The Enduring Presence of Cricket Culture

The Philadelphia Club remains the spiritual home of cricket in the United States, although its grounds are now primarily used for lawn tennis. The CC Morris Cricket Library, located nearby, houses the largest compilation of cricket literature in the Americas. Ironically, in the century following the career of the great Philadelphian fast bowler John Barton King, the US has produced more noteworthy novels about cricket than great cricketers. In 2008, Joseph O’Neill, an Irish author raised in The Hague, published “Netherland,” which was honored with the PEN/Faulkner award. After relocating to New York in 1998, O’Neill sought to pursue cricket, simply, “driving around, spotting people playing cricket and asking them: ‘Can I play?'”

New York Cricket Scene

Today, most New York cricket takes place in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, where you can often find veteran Jamaican umpire Steve Bucknor officiating local league games populated by first- and second-generation immigrants. O’Neill said, “When I decided to write about this world, I didn’t really have a big story in mind, but I had a couple of characters, people I’d met in the game, dreamers who were obsessed with cricket.” One of them became the inspiration for Chuck Ramkissoon, a key character in the novel, a charismatic figure who believes cricket is a “bona fide American pastime” and envisions building a stadium in New York City. His vision: “An arena for the greatest cricket teams in the world, twelve exhibition matches a summer, watched by eight thousand spectators at fifty dollars a pop.”

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Failed Attempts to Revive American Cricket

Ramkissoon’s ambition was mirrored by others. In 2004, entrepreneur Kalpesh Patel launched the Pro Cricket League, optimistically predicting establishment within three years. However, it folded after a single, chaotic season. Patel’s innovation involved five-ball overs, reasoning that Americans would question the logic of six, without any good answers. Jay Mir launched the American Premier League in 2009 staging a second season 13 years later, but it was marred by complaints of unpaid fees. Allen Stanford, the Texan involved in fraud, invested $3 million in a Fort Collins, Colorado, test-marketing program, confident he could “crack America”. The Cricket All-Stars exhibition series, led by Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar, hosted three matches in New York, Houston, and Los Angeles in 2015 but was discontinued before its second edition. O’Neill acknowledged the idealism of his own project, “People would ask: ‘What’s your book about?’ When I told them ‘It’s about cricket in New York,’ obviously they would say: ‘That doesn’t sound promising.’”

ICC’s Strategic Shift Towards the US Market

While the Imperial Cricket Conference once excluded the US, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has since designated the country a strategic priority. Project USA was initiated in 2004, coinciding with the national team’s qualification for the Champions Trophy in England (where they faced heavy defeats against New Zealand and Australia). Governance issues led to the project being abandoned in 2005.

The US has always shown potential with large expat audiences who regularly view website coverage. Willow TV, a specialized subscription broadcaster, has been able to sustain itself here. The Indo-American community significantly grew in the 2010s. Now, it totals at almost five million. Add to that nearly a million Bangladeshi-Americans and Pakistani-Americans, as well as another 4.5 million Caribbean-Americans.

However, successful community organization has been lacking. The USA Cricket Association was viewed as a “basket case” by an ICC insider. Following scandals and multiple suspensions from the ICC, the USACA was ousted in 2017. It was then replaced by USA Cricket two years later. However, even with the new organization, staff and budget were still scant. Unfortunately, it remained detached from sport’s rapid growth.

This acceleration is principally due to the allure of the US market for the ICC, which depends heavily on India. The ICC has three primary objectives: to champion the Major League Cricket (MLC), which began in 2023; to ensure cricket becomes an Olympic sport for the 2028 Los Angeles Games, achieved in October 2023; and to host a major tournament. In 2021, the ICC approved a joint proposal from Cricket West Indies and USA Cricket to co-host last year’s T20 World Cup.

The T20 World Cup Experience

Thus, fifteen years after “Netherland,” Ramkissoon’s vision partially materialized. Though not within New York City proper, Eisenhower Park in Nassau County hosted matches, a 45-minute train trip away – the stadium was a temporary structure. Transported from Las Vegas, the stands had previously been used for Formula One races, and the pitches were shipped from Australia. Erected rapidly, the entire setup cost roughly $30 million.

Additional venues were located in Grand Prairie, near Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, and in Lauderhill, Florida. The Florida matches were hampered to persistent rain and inadequate pitch drainage. Conversely, Grand Prairie, a converted baseball stadium previously home to the Texas AirHogs, proved successful. Despite tornado damage the week before, it was ready for the opening match between Canada and the USA.

Had the games been solely in Grand Prairie, they would have gone largely unnoticed. While the Dallas-Fort Worth area’s Indian, Pakistani, and Nepali communities showed interest, the broader public remained unaware. Despite fervent discussions among fans in the local area, few others knew about the tournament’s existence (take a left at the scale replica of the Taj Mahal near the local Ripley’s Believe It or Not!).

The New York Gamble

The ICC determined that participation in New York was essential – reminiscent of the Frank Sinatra strategy: “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.” The goal was to pique American interest in cricket. This strategy partially worked. An American team, mostly composed of imported talent, defeated Canada and Pakistan. All of a sudden, the country discovered that it had a cricket team. ESPN, initially hesitant due to a lack of broadcast rights, covered the event on its daily show. Media outlets, which had previously overlooked cricket, made late accreditation requests. One journalist reported that his editor-in-chief wanted to know why they “were the only mainstream publication in the US not writing about the cricket”. This all led to the highly-anticipated match between Pakistan and India. The Nassau County police chief deemed it “like the Super Bowl on steroids”. The 34,000 tickets were sold out, marking the largest attendance for cricket in the US – the ICC’s media team celebrated the presence of numerous celebrities. Thousands also watched in Queens’ Citi Field on large-screen TVs.

Despite challenges such as security concerns, minimal city advertising, a deserted fan zone at One World Trade, and inconsistent pitch quality that impacted the opening games by making batting nearly impossible, the initiative had succeeded. Low-scoring pitches contributed to a series of compelling finishes. Independent research for the ICC found over 50,000 media pieces from the US alone naming that market as their 2^nd largest for coverage. Furthermore, the competition yielded over $500 million in profit for the ICC – surpassing that of all previously hosted ICC events.

Internal Conflicts and Future Uncertainties

Following the games, ICC board members gave anonymous briefings disclosing a $20 million budget overrun resulting in outrage. It was then revealed that incoming chair, Jay Shah, ran on a promise to stop financial waste to allot funds to member nations who elected him. The future of the ICC’s US strategy is now vague especially because Shah is in charge, and many of the project’s prior leaders have been removed. Still, discussion of budget overspend has dropped since he took office.

Local New York cricketers hardly felt the presence of the ICC events. Yet, if the temporary stadium had been constructed on their pitches in Van Cortlandt Park–eliminating their season– the outcome could have been far worse. Still, after the series ended, the cricketers wondered about the net positive.

Grassroots Development is Crucial

O’Neill believes, “The first thing they’d need to do is try and create one good cricket field, just one, on a par with the worst cricket field in London – you know what I mean? There’s just no grassroots investment. Zero. And that continues to be the case.” The underlying problem remains the same as it did 160 years ago: the pitches, kit, and coaching. The legacy resulting from last year’s T20 World Cup has thus far piqued the countries interest with concrete proof provided for the Olympics.

The eight pitches may be obtained by MLC and possibly placed on the west coast at the Oakland Coliseum, a 46,000-seat stadium that is big enough to hold a cricket field. The ICC considered using it for themselves, but there are plans to transition it to the MLC’s San Francisco Unicorns.

Major League Cricket’s Promising Future

MLC, not the ICC, will likely spearhead the sport’s development. Unlike other US cricket leagues, it has serious investors. Also, most of the members are either from the diaspora who have made money in tech firms and venture capital funds in Silicon Valley. Investors consist of Microsoft chair Satya Nadella, Adobe chair Shantanu Narayen, and Amazon growth members Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan. They retain strong Indian affiliations: the Mumbai Indians, Kolkata Knight Riders, and Chennai Super Kings each share franchise ownership. The Unicorns chief executive, David White claims the MLC’s two-seaon league, has teams that exceed most Big Bash and T20 Blast sides. Pat Cummins picked MLC over the Hundred, because he simply “hadn’t thought” of the Hundred.

MLC plans to grow including establishing a Minor League in which some sides have developed academies. Investors say venue development is the next step. Building in Brooklyn, near Ramkissoon’s envisioned area, is under construction to possibly play Olympic cricket, given Nita Ambani—an International Olympic Committee board member—invests.

The US is well-prepared to both hold the Olympic event and a made-for-TV league and to fill grounds with the Indo-American community. With the figures involved, the prowess of MLC’s stakeholders, and backing by Indian investors, an environment for cricket is growing in the US.

Ambitions Beyond T20

But those in charge want more. “I know it sounds daunting,” stated the co-owner of Seattle Orcas, Sivaramakichenane Somasegar, “But in my mind, the interesting thing here is to see cricket become a mainstream sport. It’s going to take decades, it is not an overnight thing. The closest analogy I can give you is what happened to soccer in the US. Go back to the 60s and 70s, hardly anybody knew soccer, and even in the 90s it was not well thought of. But the World Cup happened here, and Major League Soccer was launched, and people started to feel it could be serious.”

There are key disparities. Even though baseball length matches last approximately three hours, a T20 match is three hours long which can be a lot for viewers. Furthermore, weekend football already has a participation base among schools and colleges.

Although cricket engagement is small, it is growing. It has been used to reach out to Asian-Americans and Caribbean-Americans within inner-city schools, making America’s identity more diverse with modern sports like Nascar. The question is, can cricket ever rise higher so that those without backgrounds can also engage. The suggestion is so ambitious that it exceeds reach.

While the T20 World Cup took place, I was able to meet a fan, an elderly golfer in Nassau County, to find out more about all the action. Even though there were a lot of resources and work that went in, there will be hope for a long lasting vision.

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