Cricket goes global: T20 World Cup comes to the US and the West Indies

International cricket is coming to America. The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup arrives at a time when cricket’s popularity has soared worldwide. The Major League Cricket, launched last year, aims to market the game to a US audience fed on a diet of American football, baseball, basketball, and ice hockey.

Selling cricket to Americans isn’t easy. In the US, the game is played only by people with links to the subcontinent. Yet the World Cup could help the game grow in the Americas, and it will be in keeping with the plans of the International Cricket Conference, the cricket’s apex body, to spread the game beyond the traditional powerhouses.

The World Cup, co-hosted by the US and the West Indies, will be the biggest, with a record 20 countries participating. The Australia-England game in Barbados on June 8, and India-Pakistan clash in New York on June 9 are among the keenly awaited matches in the 55-game tournament.

As the biennial event begins on June 1 in Dallas, Texas, cricket will have returned to one of its earliest moorings — the United States.

The first reference to cricket, believed to have been invented during Saxon or Norman times in southeast England, was in 1611, according to the ICC website. While the sport grew in England, it also spread to British colonies and was brought to the US in the early 1700s by colonial sailors.

Although cricket initially spread across the country, its popularity waned due to the failure to open clubs to the working class. Its demise was accelerated by the rise of baseball in the 1800s. “The sport of cricket had a popularity (then) that it does not enjoy now by any means. Now, the country possesses a ball game that is quickly played and yields exciting and lively contests,” a report in the New York Times in 1868 said.

With time, cricket changed. When it returns to America for the World Cup, the game is no longer the dull, slow contest played by men in white flannels over several days with a red ball. In the popular version, cricketers in coloured uniforms belt white balls in four-hour 20-over competitions.

Unlike the US, co-hosts West Indies have a long tradition of producing high-calibre cricketers. With breathtaking strokeplay, fiery fast bowling and electric fielding, cricketers from the palm-fringed, sun-drenched islands in the Caribbean gave cricket the Calyso flavour. It was cricket’s favourite flavour in the eighties and early nineties when Clive Lloyd’s Invincibles lorded over cricket.

After the golden era, West Indian cricket slumped, although Darren Sammy inspired them to T20 world titles in 2012 and 2016. Caribbean cricket continued to be in a freefall as they failed to qualify for the 2022 T20 World Cup and the 2023 ODI World Cup. They will want to put that nightmare behind them.

Like the West Indies, most cricket-playing countries were British colonies. It came to Canada in the late 1700s and spread swiftly. “Cricket had been played from coast to coast to coast by the 1890’s, some 25 years after it had been declared the national sport,” an ESPN Cricinfo report said

Canada and the USA played the first international match in history in September 1844 in New York, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. That was long before the first cricket Test between England and Australia in 1892. The Canadian Cricket Association, now Cricket Canada, formed in 1892, is still the governing cricket body.

Inclement weather was a stumbling block to popularity. Yet Canada have been regulars on the ICC circuit, playing in several World Cups starting with the 1975 Prudential World Cup (50 overs). Oddly, this is their first appearance at a T20 World Cup.

The Netherlands, a standout among Associate members, have qualified automatically for the tournament. With five T20 World Cup appearances since 2009, the Dutch finished in the top eight in 2022 and were the only Associate at the 2023 ODI World Cup. They have become the bogey team for South Africa, sending them out of the 2022 T20 World Cup and beating them again at the 2023 ODI World Cup.

Namibia, a former South African protectorate, has a cricket history from the early 1900s. An ICC member since 1992, the desert nation have appeared in the 2021 and 2022 T20 World Cups.

Nepal qualified for the T20 World Cup for the first time in a decade, while Papua New Guinea make their second appearance. Oman, who played their first T20 International in 2015, will make their third appearance in the tournament.

Uganda is home to a substantial South Asian population, which brought cricket to the African country. Although the diaspora has sustained the sport, school cricket has given rise to a generation of home-grown talent. This is their first appearance at the World Cup.

For the Associate nations — the US, Namibia, Scotland, Oman, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, Nepal and the Netherlands — the World Cup is a chance to test their mettle against the best. Namibia, Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands are regulars in ICC tournaments, which points to their rising stature. Cricket remains an amateur sport in these countries. A proper domestic structure and adequate international exposure can level the playing field. There’s no better exposure than the World Cup, where the big boys play.