“America is a sports-loving country.” This is the opening line to an article written by The Guardian in 2014 about why America would learn to love cricket. It went on to note that more international sports can have a hard time making a dent in the U.S. because of the popularity of the States’ “big four” sports of football, basketball, hockey, and baseball.
However, the article ultimately posited that cricket would find popularity in the U.S. because it’s growing and because ESPN devotes at least a little bit of attention to it. It also mentioned the idea of the IPL and T20 cricket as versions of the game that might better appeal to American audiences that aren’t used to the length and intricacy of a standard cricket match.
Well, it’s now been a few years since that article put forth its theories, and cricket is not significantly more popular in America. In fact, it’s still a fringe sport at best. This won’t bother cricket fans around the world, who have plenty to pay attention to without any kind of American market. But it’s still a little bit puzzling that a sport so wildly popular in so much of the world can’t seem to gain traction in a nation famous for its love of athletic competition. As far as we can determine, these are a few reasons why:
It’s Not An Olympic Sport
As one site presenting interesting analyses of ideas across all kinds of topics put it, there are many reasons cricket isn’t a viable Olympic sport. The best point made was that the Olympic motto is “faster, higher, stronger,” as opposed to “longer, savvier, more consistent,” which would better describe cricket ideals. It’s just not a game that’s well suited to the Olympic format. Now, that doesn’t seem to match up with American criteria for popular sports either; American football is not in the Olympics, and baseball hasn’t been involved either (though it will be in 2020). Still, for an international sport to reach American audiences, it would help for it to feature heavily at the world’s biggest competition.
T20 Isn’t Enough
When T20 emerged in 2003 there was some optimism that it would widen the popularity of the sport, potentially even to the U.S. One site analyzing different strategic outlooks for people betting on all kinds of sporting events stated that T20 cricket would appeal to those who never had the patience or intellectual interest in the longer version of the game. It also mentioned that T20 was potentially a better format for cricket betting, which certainly matters in the overall popularity of a sport. But while these are perfectly sensible takes, T20 does more to shorten cricket than simplify it. To the average American sports fan, it still looks like an alien version of baseball.
The Space Is Filled
That last point about baseball deserves its own category, because it might ultimately be the main reason cricket can’t catch on in the U.S. On the one hand, Americans love their baseball. The sport is known as the American pastime, and absolutely brims with history and tradition. On the other hand, even baseball has come under fire in recent years for being a little bit slow and complex for modern audiences! If that’s the case, cricket really doesn’t have much ch
