Cricket in the United States

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Cricket in the United States
Country United States
Governing body United States of America Cricket Association
National team United States
First played 1793
National competitions

Cricket in the United States is a sport played at the amateur, club, intercollegiate, and international competition levels. There have also been several recent attempts to form professional cricket leagues in the United States.

History

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Main article: History of United States cricket
The Belmont Cricket Club in 1905.

It has been generally agreed by sports historians that cricket, besides the Native American sport lacrosse, was both the first organized team sport and the first major team sport in the United States.[1]

Cricket was played by British colonists in North America by the start of the 18th century.[2]

Archived references to cricket played in America date from 1709. A New York newspaper from 1739 contains an advertisement for cricket players and the first documented competition occurred in 1751 in Manhattan. Cricket received a significant amount of media coverage at the time. The sport was played in approximately 125 cities in 22 states. Roughly 500 officially established clubs existed and it is probable that in 1860 there were 10,000 boys and men in America who had actively played the sport for at least a season.[3]

Dartmouth College students were playing cricket on the Green by 1793.[4] Haverford College formed a cricket team in 1833. In recent years Haverford is one of the few post-secondary institutions to field a cricket team at the varsity level; hence, most of Haverford's opponents are collegiate club-level teams.[5] Clubs from the United States and Canada participated in one of the first international cricket matches on record in 1844 in Bloomingdale Park in Manhattan.[6]

In 2004 Pro Cricket was organized as a professional Twenty20 format league with eight teams in two divisions. However, the league closed at the end of its first season in 2004. The Pro Cricket league was independent of the USACA and not recognized or sanctioned by it.

Organization of cricket in the United States

International cricket

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Main article: United States national cricket team

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Main article: United States national women's cricket team

International Cricket was nonexistent until recently when the United States national cricket team started playing in the World Cricket League.[citation needed] Cricket in the United States is run by the United States of America Cricket Association, whose effectiveness is lessened by limited funds due to cricket's lack of popularity compared to other American sports. The United States cricket team is currently unranked in Test Cricket and One Day International cricket.

Domestic competitions

  • Amateur City Leagues - Many of the biggest cities in the United States, such as Detroit, have their own amateur cricket league. One of the biggest leagues is the Detroit Cricket League with 30 different teams playing in metropolitan Detroit.
  • Pro Cricket – The first professional cricket league in the United States. It was operated by American Pro Cricket LLC (APC), a private company independent of the ICC and the USACA. The league was formed in 2004 as one of several independent efforts by different organizations to develop and promote cricket in the United States. The league folded after one season due to low attendance and the cancellation of the league's TV deal.
  • American Twenty20 Championship – Twenty20 cricket tournament aimed at grooming American cricket players for international events and to spread interest in the U.S. Its first and only season was a three-day event in 2011, consisting of a tournament played in New Jersey,[7] which was won by the Atlantic Division. The tournament was supported by the United States of America Cricket Association, the national federation of cricket in the US.
  • Major League Cricket - Organization that intended to form a Twenty20 league in 2007 and host an under-15 tournament in 2005, but neither were realized. The organization hosted a National Interstate Cricket Cup tournament in Florida in 2005. MLC began in 2000 and attempted rival the USACA during the U.S. cricketing tumult of 2004-2006.
  • American Premier League - Twenty20 league that never got off the ground in 2009.
  • TANA Premier League - The Telugu Association of North America, or TANA, administers a cricket tournament across the United States, the most recent being in that of May 2015 in Detroit, Michigan. In July 2015, several actors and actresses from the Telugu Film Industry, or Tollywood, will be journeying to Detroit to play against the champions of the TANA Premier League Cup.

Cricket grounds

Students playing cricket at Dartmouth College in 1793

There are only a few purpose-built cricket grounds in the United States, they include the Germantown Cricket Club Ground and the Philadelphia Cricket Club Ground[8] in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Randolph St. George Walker Park on Staten Island, New York; the Central Broward Regional Park in Lauderhill, Florida; and the Leo Magnus Cricket Complex in Van Nuys, California.

The Indianapolis World Sports Park in Indianapolis, Indiana, which will feature cricket grounds, is scheduled to be completed in 2014, and will host the USACA's national championship in 2014.[9]

The game is also played on a number of shared purpose venues, they include Van Cortlandt Stadium in Bronx, New York and others.

The major cricket ground in USA

Governing body

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Main article: United States of America Cricket Association

The United States of America Cricket Association (USACA) is the governing body for International Cricket Council (ICC) sanctioned cricket in the United States. The ICC recognized the USACA as an associate member starting in 1965. In 2005 the USACA was suspended from an ICC sponsored annual conference due to problems with USACA elections, but that suspension was lifted in March 2006.[10] In 2007 the USACA was again suspended by the ICC because of problems with its administration and constitution, but was again recognized beginning on April 1, 2008.[10]

The national association organizes play within and between seven regional conferences,[11] which may contain several leagues. A league is a group of 8 or more teams that play according to a schedule.[12] Competition is held at various age levels including under-19, under-15, senior, etc. The USACA holds a National Senior Tournament as well as national and international competitions for other age groups.

Cricket in American culture

In 2006 it was estimated that 30,000 people in the United States play or watch cricket annually.[5] Cricket in the United States is not as popular as baseball and is not as popular among as large a fraction of the population as it is within either the Commonwealth nations or the other ICC full member (or Test cricket) nations.[13] There are at least two historical reasons for the relative obscurity of cricket within the United States. One reason was the 19th-century-rise of the summer time bat and ball sport now called baseball, which seems to have displaced cricket as a popular pastime.[13] Another reason was that in 1909 when the ICC was originally organized as the Imperial Cricket Conference it was open only to Commonwealth nations and thereby excluded the US from participating in the sport at the highest level.[14]

Nevertheless, in 1965 the US was admitted to the renamed ICC as an associate member and the sport grew in popularity in the second half of the 20th century. An oft mentioned reason for the growing popularity of cricket is the growing population of immigrants to the US who come from cricket playing nations.[5][13]

With the launching of the United States Youth Cricket Association in 2010, a more focused effort to bring the game to American schools was begun, with the intention of broadening cricket's fan base beyond expatriates and their children.[15]

ESPN has been stepping up its coverage of cricket in recent years, buying the cricket website Cricinfo in 2007, and broadcasting the final of the 2014 ICC World Twenty20 competition, the 2014 Indian Premier League, English County Championship games, and international test cricket.[16]

See also

References

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