T20 World Cup: Can cricket make inroads in baseball-loving America?

Cricket, a popular pastime in the United States in the mid-1800s, makes a costly return to North American shores via the T20 Word Cup, but will it be able to leave an impression on local audiences who know little or nothing about the gentleman? game? Cricket globally is driven by India, but the International Cricket Council sees huge potential in the American market and says there are already 30 million fans following the game in the huge country.

The T20 final is also seen as a major stepping stone towards the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, where cricket will return after 128 years when the big event begins on June 1.

A total of 16 games will be played across three locations – New York, Dallas and Lauderhill – with the majority of 55 matches scheduled in the Caribbean, including qualifiers.

The third day of the competition will see South Africa and Sri Lanka do battle in New York, where the first international cricket game was played between the USA and Canada in 1844.

It was a time when the sport was played widely across America before a much faster alternative in baseball came to prominence during the Civil War in the 1860s.

“…(T20) is entertainment and that’s what people look for. That’s what Americans look for, you know, they want entertainment,” says legendary West Indian Brian Lara, one of the most recognized cricketers in the world, but someone who admits he could walk around Miami without looking twice.

“You know, you talk to an American and I’ve done this many times and they say ‘you play a game for five days and then it ends in a draw? So it’s difficult,” he explains the challenge of selling Test cricket to an American, who may just warm up to the shorter format.

A few weeks of international cricket in a strange land will not be enough to spark lasting interest from local audiences and to ensure the game grows beyond the South Asian and Caribbean expatriate community, stakeholders will need more time.

For a beginner, cricket can be quite complex to understand, especially when one is introduced to “third man”, “fine leg” or “deep mid-wicket”, some of the terms used for the many field placements in the game.

The ICC is making every effort to engage the American public, whether it’s bringing in eight-time Olympic gold-winning sprinter Usain Bolt as a World Cup ambassador or promoting the event at the recent Formula 1 race in Miami.

To distract the average American family from the world of baseball, the NFL and the NBA, cricket will need to grow at the grassroots.

“I certainly think the game can grow in the US. When you have a presence in a country, people start gravitating towards it and want to know more about it,” Bolt, who belongs to the cricket-loving Caribbean, told PTI in a recent interview.

Americans certainly have a reason to follow the event. Their team, made up mainly of players from South Asia and the Caribbean, will make their World Cup debut.

Venu Pisike, head of USA Cricket, reckons that the ICC event will bring much-needed awareness about the game, but eventually, it is the lure of participating in the 2028 Olympics that will attract masses to the sport.

“Until now, cricket is predominantly an expatriate game, but with the marketing and promotional activities during the World Cup, there is some momentum and the World Cup will certainly increase opportunities for expanding the game in the US,” said Pisike.

“Definitely the World Cup is bringing a lot of awareness and then the opportunity for cricket to be in the Olympics, which will certainly attract the community because the US is a big sporting country.

“The Olympics is the main area where all the sporting bodies are focusing as cricket is going to the Olympics, which will actually give more opportunities for the sport to expand between the World Cup and the Olympics,” Pisike added.

The U.S. team chosen for the tournament is made up of a group of semi-professionals who rely on full-time jobs to take care of their families. That will have to change if the sport is to attract a wider audience in America, believes Indian-born U.S. team member Nisarg Patel.

“Ultimately, what needs to change in the US is that an American kid in high school needs to see a future in the game. There are so many sports in America that the country is built on Olympic medals.

“For cricket to be successful, we need to show them that playing cricket is a career,” said the spinner, who works full-time at a medical research company in Los Angeles.

The start of Major League Cricket last year, the sport’s first professional league in the country, was a big step in that direction.

However, capturing people’s imagination in a country with an already populated and developed sporting scene would be a huge challenge for the ICC and other stakeholders.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)