The United States of America is a sport-mad nation. From the moment kids are born they’re taking part in the likes of Little League, whilst ‘soccer moms’ is a phrase that is used to describe very specific types of women in the country.

From the National Football League to the National Basketball Association via the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball, the Americans adore sports. British people might scoff at the idea, laughing at the ‘Yanks’ that call it ‘soccer’ because they’ve got a football of their own, but they love certain sports. Cricket is one that has never quite taken off there, but might it do in the future?

A History of Cricket in the States

It might seem odd now, considering America is a country in which the sports have to be fast and furious to keep the attention of the locals, but cricket was actually one of the first sports played in the young country. In fact, it could be thought of as the first ‘national game‘ of the United States of America.

The first international sporting event played anywhere in the world was a cricket match between Canada and the US. That was in 1844, meaning that it was before even the revived version of the Olympic Games by in excess of 50 years. The sport itself had been being played in America for more than 100 years before even that.

First Match in history of Cricket Usa v Canada
And also the first match of t20 wc 2024 usa vs canada❤️#T20WorldCup2024 pic.twitter.com/GDKltgRhoo

— Abdul Qasim (@QasimKh11215088) January 6, 2024

William Byrd was an owner of a plantation in Virginia and wrote about playing cricket in his diary, which he kept between 1709 and 1712. The New York Gazette wrote a report about a cricket match in 1751 between a ‘London eleven’ and one representing New York City. Benjamin Franklin brought back a copy of the 1744 laws from England in 1754, allowing for the formalisation of the rules in the US.

There are reports of Abraham Lincoln turning out to watch a match between Chicago and Milwaukee in 1849, with an estimation suggesting that as many as 10,000 Americans were playing the sport and thousands more were watching it.

A Philadelphian named J. Barton King could be considered America’s greatest ever cricketer, setting records for bowling that stood for 40 years when the US toured England in 1908. It is fair to say, then, that American hasn’t always been against cricket as a sport. Yet by the time that King retired, it had all but disappeared as a sport in the United States.

It is likely that the spread of rounders, which would mutate in baseball, helped to kill it off, even if cricket didn’t give up without a fight. It certainly didn’t help that the Imperial Cricket Conference was formed in 1909 and decided that no country outside of the British Empire could belong.

Is it Making a Comeback?

Cricket is a slow sport, for the most part. Even its most ardent admirers would struggle to convince its detractors that it was anything but slow apart from when the bowlers begin their run-ups and the batters send the ball off towards the boundary. There is an argument that it can be more like a game of chess than a sport in the traditional sense, with those watching needing to decipher why the fielders are being positioned where they are. Yet there is also a sense that it is making a comeback.

It is felt that the presence of so many immigrants into the country from the likes of India, Pakistan and the Caribbean is helping.

In 2005, Michael Bloomberg was the Mayor of New York City and gave the go-ahead for a $1.5 million cricket pitch to be created in the St. Albans Park of Queens. The game also moved out of its traditional US heartlands of New York and Philadelphia, springing up in the likes of Dallas, Atlanta, Wichita and Los Angeles.

Not long after the turn of the millennium, Major League Cricket confirmed a plan to re-build the sport by working with local authorities and schools to introduce it to young players. The 2024 MLC season saw matches taking place at Grand Prairie Stadium in North Texas and Church Street Park in North Carolina.

Could it Ever Become as Big in the States as Elsewhere?

The main question most people would want to ask about cricket in the United States of America is why the likes of the International Cricket Council even care. Given the fact that baseball, basketball and American football all compete for the attention of sports fans before you even need to mention the likes of ice hockey, golf or tennis, is there even the slightest chance that cricket would be able to make a dent?

The answer, of course, is that the US is a cash cow like no other. If cricket can become even slightly popular there then it would almost certainly be worth billions of dollars, which is why the ICC is happy to push for it to happen.

What a weekend for cricket in America!

From US beating Pakistan to hosting 34k people in New York City for the epic India Pakistan showdown… it’s been a weekend to remember pic.twitter.com/e88ZeSNVoS

— Satyan Gajwani (@satyan) June 10, 2024

It is also worth noting that it doesn’t really need to do much in the way of breaking through for it to earn enough money to wash its face. It is important to remember that cricket isn’t the main sport in England, with football boasting that particular crown. Tennis might be ahead of it, at least when Wimbledon rolls around, whilst rugby is also more popular in many of the northern towns.

All cricket would really need to do to make its mark is get a slight toe-hold and go from there. The 2024 T20 World Cup gave the sport a fighting chance on that front, given that it was jointly hosted by the USA and the West Indies.

It is probably no coincidence that T20 is the more exciting version of cricket. The Indian Premier League’s matches are worth more than £10 million each. That combination of a more exciting format and the huge profitability is something that Americans might find difficult to resist. Major League Cricket was given a re-brand and a re-launch in 2023, thanks in no small part to the powerful investors that are behind it.

Quite whether the future of the sport in the United States is big or not remains to be seen, but the one thing that we can say with a sense of certainly is that there is money to be made if a breakthrough can be found.