Cricket in America – know the history and historical events

The United States of America (USA) will provide the backdrop cricket's long-awaited return to the Olympics with the hugely popular bat-and-ball sport included in the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Games schedule.

Cricket was part of the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris, but has not been on the Olympic program since.

LA, and the US as a whole, provides an interesting location for the return of crickets to the flock.

Overall, cricket isn't even the most popular bat-and-ball sport in the US. That would be baseball, a distant cousin of crickets and America's national pastime. Basketball, American football, soccer, rugby, ice hockey and several others also surpass cricket in terms of popularity in America.

As a sport, cricket in America remains largely confined to the country's South Asian and Caribbean diaspora.

However, things are moving quickly and the success of the 2024 ICC Men's T20 World Cup, co-hosted by the US and West Indies, is a testament to the growing appeal of crickets in the United States.

Although the US's association with cricket seems quite recent, it is explored in more detail history of cricket in America presents a very different story. The two have a rich history together dating back to the 18th century, long before the modern version of baseball was even created.

In essence, cricket was played in the US before it became the United States of America – the country we know today.

Cricket in America – first record

As in most regions, cricket arrived on American shores with its British colonists sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. The earliest record of the sport being practiced in the American subcontinent dates back to 1709.

About ten o'clock Dr. Blair, Major and Captain Harrison to us. After I gave them a glass of bag, we played cricket, as one William Byrd, owner of the Westover Plantation in Virginia, recorded in a diary of May 6, 1709. I ate boiled beef for dinner. Then we played arrow shooting… and then went back to playing cricket until it got dark.

In 1751, the New York Gazette and the Weekly Post Boy published an account of a match between a London team and a New York team in Manhattan. It is the first reference of a public cricket match in North America.

Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, played a crucial role in helping formalize the rules of cricket in America in 1754 after bringing a copy of the 1744 Laws – the official rule book for crickets – from England.

There is also anecdotal evidence that troops under George Washington, Franklin's co-founder and the first president of the United States, played a sport called wickets at Valley Forge in 1778.

It is also documented that Abraham Lincoln, another famous American president, also attended a cricket match between Chicago and Milwaukee in 1849.

First international cricket match

Interestingly, the very first recorded international cricket match took place between the US and Canada in 1844. The two-day match, extended to three days due to rain delays, was played at the grounds of St George's Cricket Club in New York.

The Canadian cricket team won the match by 23 runs, albeit under controversial circumstances.

George Wheatcroft, Team USA's third batter, failed to show up in time to bat in the fourth innings, arriving only 20 minutes after his team's last wicket fell. The hosts argued that he should get to work and the match should go ahead, but the Canadians refused to entertain them.

Interestingly, David Winckworth, who was Canada's top scorer in both innings of the match and scalped four wickets with his pace bowling in the first innings, also became the first double international player in cricket.

He represented Canada in the next two games – one in Montreal and then in New York – in 1845. The Northerners won both games.

In 1846, Winckworth, who had moved to Detroit, would show up for the US in Harlem when the US finally won a game.