There's a new sport rising in popularity in the United States, and it's one that much of the world is already obsessed with: cricket. The game of bat and ball, which is deeply rooted in the culture of many South Asian and Australasian countries, is widely considered the second most popular sport in the world. It is now seeing an unprecedented spike in the number of American fans, which some see as a sign that cricket is here to stay.
America's obsession with cricket may have been heightened by Team USA's win over Pakistan on June 6 in the Men's T20 Cricket World Cup. The Pakistan national team is considered one of the most dominant clubs in cricket, and the American win “was the biggest in American cricket history and is already considered one of the biggest upsets in the sport,” said CNN. But even before this stunning victory, cricket was already gaining fans in the US. Why is the sport finally making its way to the United States?
How popular is cricket in the United States?
The exact number of players is difficult to determine. However, there are at least 400 individual cricket leagues nationwide, according to USA Cricket statistics cited by CBS News. This equates to approximately 200,000 cricket players in the United States, and this number is expected to continue to rise in the coming years.
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Also striking is the huge number of fans who attend live cricket matches. The June 9 Pakistan-India match and the June 12 US-India match, both held in Nassau County, New York, each attracted more than 34,000 spectators in the stands, according to the International Cricket Council. It also doesn't hurt that the global viewership is among the highest of any sport; more than 400 million people worldwide watched the match between Pakistan and India, The Athletics reported, compared to the 125 million who watched this year's Super Bowl.
Why is there a sudden rise in popularity?
The names of American cricket stars are “[obscure] in the eyes of most Americans,” and yet the “potential for the growth of cricket in America has never looked stronger,” he said The Atlantic Ocean. This is partly due to a demographic shift over the past century. While baseball became entrenched as America's national pastime in the early 20th century, in the 1960s, 'increasing immigration from the West Indies revived cricket, especially in the New York region; and in the decades that followed, immigration from South Asia also increased dramatically. said the Atlantic.
Today, there are “more than five million Americans of South Asian descent, the majority of whom are Indian-American,” according to The Atlantic, though many of them “have almost nowhere to play or watch the game locally.” This has created pent-up demand and a new market for American cricketers.
Because of this continued rise in immigration, it is perhaps inevitable that international sports will eventually find their way into our collective consciousness, he said. Vanity fair. The newspaper used the example of Formula 1 racing, which just a few years ago was 'barely a blip on our sporting radar'. But “these days, thanks in large part to Netflix's 'Drive to Survive,' tour stops in cities like Austin, Miami and Las Vegas have become the hottest ticket in town.” So it is conceivable that a similar trajectory could occur in cricket.
In addition to the game's average fan, there is also a “coterie of big spenders, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen and Access Healthcare chairman Anurag Jain” looking to raise cricket's profile, according to Vanity Fair. All three “have invested in Major League Cricket, the American men's professional league that launched last summer with six teams,” which advocates hope could further broaden cricket's appeal. The game will also be discussed at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, which could further increase its ubiquity. “It really is a turning point for cricket in this country,” cricket reporter Smit Patel told CBS.
“There has been a growing embrace of what has been a global sport, beyond the participation of the United States,” Jay Coakley, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, who studies global migration and sports, told the Christian Science Monitor. But “I don't see cricket here just like a waterfall coming into the US. I see it more like a stream.”
