Why Is Cricket Not Popular In The U.s. And Canada?

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I guess that it is because America wanted to be its own nation, so they discarded sports like cricket (which were thought of as "English") and came up with their own alternatives.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Interesting vid on this theme http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=5TspIzewltg&feature=endscreen
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Another good one is the Sport Science one, especially interesting that they put the cricketer in the batter's box in addition to putting the hitter in the crease. But it's funny they call the american cricketer an "international star", anyone on here heard of him? Not sure you could name anyone on the American team, maybe a few on Canada's team. Not to blame you for your ignorance, I can't name anyone on Australia's Baseball team or Hockey team
 
Cricket Canuck said:
Another good one is the Sport Science one, especially interesting that they put the cricketer in the batter's box in addition to putting the hitter in the crease. But it's funny they call the american cricketer an "international star", anyone on here heard of him? Not sure you could name anyone on the American team, maybe a few on Canada's team. Not to blame you for your ignorance, I can't name anyone on Australia's Baseball team or Hockey team
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Yeah that's quite funny. The 'All rounder' for a start was a very slow medium pace bowler who I reckon I could play and I'm a joke at batting. They should have brought in a half decent pace bowler or a good spinner. But crickets so much more complex than just hitting the ball hard, most of the balls he hit would have been caught and he'd be out, but I suppose the same nonesense applies to the cricket blokes attempts at batting with a baseball bat, it's just entertainment.
 
someblokecalleddave said:
Yeah that's quite funny. The 'All rounder' for a start was a very slow medium pace bowler who I reckon I could play and I'm a joke at batting. They should have brought in a half decent pace bowler or a good spinner. But crickets so much more complex than just hitting the ball hard, most of the balls he hit would have been caught and he'd be out, but I suppose the same nonesense applies to the cricket blokes attempts at batting with a baseball bat, it's just entertainment.
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I don't think any of the hits they showed from the baseball player would have been out. They all looked like line-drives which are likely hits in baseball, so I'd imagine they would be as well in cricket as they were all great, solid contact. But yes, the skill levels were not comparable. One is a star in the MLB and one is a nobody on a bad team, if you wanted to make any real comparisons they'd need to have a good cricketer.
 
That Sports Science video would have been great with someone like Kieron Pollard.

I wanna post my thoughts on this reeeeeeeeally badly, but it'll have to wait until I have time to sit down and rant. Placeholder.
 
Liz Ward said:
If anybody is really interested, I asked the President of the United States Youth Cricket Association http://usyca.org and I found his answer absolutely fascinating. So much so that I thought I would share with you...

Cricket was America's first team sport. Played by colonists and then by the earliest citizens of our new republic, there was a time when it stood alone atop America's games. This fact is attested to by the fact that the first international sporting event was a cricket match between the US and Canada held in New York in 1844. For much of the nineteenth century, cricket and baseball were on an equal footing with the US population. So what happened?

Baseball, ever keen to find a mass market for its product, spent the 1800s tweaking its rules until it developed into a sport that was easy to learn, fun to play and also entertaining to watch. Cricket, on the other hand, stodgily refused to modify itself, mainly out of a combination of classism, arrogance and a misplaced love of "tradition." As a result, baseball became the "national pastime" and cricket became increasingly marginalized in America. By the turn of the century, cricket was a game played only by country club members, mainly in Philadelphia.

The end of the twentieth century has seen cricket revived in North America, mainly due to immigration from the Indian subcontinent and the advent of limited-overs matches. The State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs now estimates there are more than 100,000 active adult cricket players in the US, and that figure climbs every year. The problem is that the ethnic enclaves that embrace cricket tend to be insular and even the leaders of these communities are uncomfortable with being cast as spokespersons for the game to the indigenous population. As a result, cricket in America has had to rely on a constant flow of immigrants to survive, and even now these immigration patterns are slowing. The model, therefore, is not sustainable.

The USYCA mission is to take the game to children in schools, and having introduced the game to them there, to provide opportunities for them to learn the game properly outside of school, with the object being to systematically build an indigenous base of cricket players and fans. We look to the example of American soccer in the early 1970s, which went from an immigrant, niche sport to the mainstream because of its adoption by schools and youth sports organizations. We intend to follow this model, only with more of a focused national vision than did soccer, which developed more organically.

So far, our approach has paid off. In the past year, USYCA has donated over 700 cricket sets to schools in the United States, and because of the USYCA Schools Program, cricket is being played by hundreds of thousands of American schoolchildren. USYCA has also begun the process of creating introductory youth cricket programs, under the auspices of established community sports organizations, for the Summer of 2012.

So, with our grassroots, bottom-up approach, things are changing, but it will take time to see results at the senior level. There's nothing to be gained by rushing the process, though, and much to be eventually gained by doing the job right.
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thats fascinating insight into the issue- I recall reading a Gideon Haigh article at some point which related the tournament held in UK prior to WW1 where the USA had shown considerable interest in competing but the MCC basically ignored the approach for political reasons- something to do with Empire and trade which doesn't surprise me, and therefore the best opportunity to expand the sport was lost and baseball kicked on to the detriment of cricket.
I've often thought of the cricket vs baseball debate similar to AFL vs NRL/Soccer in Australia- a nuanced and varied skill set versus one-dimensional and limiting skill sets. That's my opinion and I'm sure everyone has theirs....
 
I only skimmed through the previous posts in this thread, and all the main arguments have been made. To executively summarise, I can honestly see Twenty20 cricket becoming an accepted sport in the United States. Despite it being an "English sport", I would love to see the Americans adapt the game to their own culture; I envision high-school marching bands belting out tunes, crowds chanting and cheering and doing waves, and the players out in the middle giving good reason for all of the aforementioned.

The main thing that needs to be done is explaining the basic rules of the game to the American public. If it is done in the same style as that Sports Science video, I think the Americans will go for it; bring out the drama and excitement that our wonderful game can bring -- even in its shortest format -- and this will appeal to the American crowd. I know I'm a sucker for 3D graphics and animation. Most importantly, though, I don't think it should be done from a "Cricket vs Baseball" perspective -- baseball is America's past-time, and cricket has to respect that. Cricket season might have to run parallel to baseball season, which will be extremely difficult as MLB games are pretty much played daily.

We can take encouragement from the Windies-NZ T20s that have been scheduled for July, but I would like to see the USACA get their house in order before anything else. I'm not sure whatever happened to the proposed American T20 league, but I think that inroads need to be made before this league begins. If I had any sway with the USACA or Cricket Holdings America, I would make sure that the Lauderhill pitch is a belter*, then start advertising the Windies-NZ T20s well before the July fixtures. I have seen advertising campaigns (nothing to do with sport) that are made up of several short parts. Cricket, for instance, could be done in a batch of a dozen 15-second advertisements, each with an edgy tagline that depicts a different rule of the game. "Rule #1: You're only out when you say you're out" could simply illustrate that a batsman keeps batting until the fielding team actually gets him out.

* Most of the cricketing world usually wouldn't condone the deliberate preparation of flat tracks, but I think this case is an exception; it was unfortunate that the 2010 NZ-SL T20s in Lauderhill were low-scoring affairs, and I'm afraid that probably dented cricket's image at least a little bit. If we're trying to simplify the game for a new audience, we should focus on the high-risk, high-scoring and big-hitting nature of T20, and purely for the sake of the new audience, we should as much as we can to ensure a high-scoring affair.

The bottom line is that the USACA will need some time to win over local American fans. Hopefully after the American T20 League takes off, the board will then have little trouble inviting other Test-playing teams with a whole new generation of red-blooded American cricket lovers to increase the popularity, validity and growth of the tournament and American cricket in general.
 
troll3y said:
I only skimmed through the previous posts in this thread, and all the main arguments have been made. To executively summarise, I can honestly see Twenty20 cricket becoming an accepted sport in the United States. Despite it being an "English sport", I would love to see the Americans adapt the game to their own culture; I envision high-school marching bands belting out tunes, crowds chanting and cheering and doing waves, and the players out in the middle giving good reason for all of the aforementioned.

The main thing that needs to be done is explaining the basic rules of the game to the American public. If it is done in the same style as that Sports Science video, I think the Americans will go for it; bring out the drama and excitement that our wonderful game can bring -- even in its shortest format -- and this will appeal to the American crowd. I know I'm a sucker for 3D graphics and animation. Most importantly, though, I don't think it should be done from a "Cricket vs Baseball" perspective -- baseball is America's past-time, and cricket has to respect that. Cricket season might have to run parallel to baseball season, which will be extremely difficult as MLB games are pretty much played daily.

We can take encouragement from the Windies-NZ T20s that have been scheduled for July, but I would like to see the USACA get their house in order before anything else. I'm not sure whatever happened to the proposed American T20 league, but I think that inroads need to be made before this league begins. If I had any sway with the USACA or Cricket Holdings America, I would make sure that the Lauderhill pitch is a belter*, then start advertising the Windies-NZ T20s well before the July fixtures. I have seen advertising campaigns (nothing to do with sport) that are made up of several short parts. Cricket, for instance, could be done in a batch of a dozen 15-second advertisements, each with an edgy tagline that depicts a different rule of the game. "Rule #1: You're only out when you say you're out" could simply illustrate that a batsman keeps batting until the fielding team actually gets him out.

* Most of the cricketing world usually wouldn't condone the deliberate preparation of flat tracks, but I think this case is an exception; it was unfortunate that the 2010 NZ-SL T20s in Lauderhill were low-scoring affairs, and I'm afraid that probably dented cricket's image at least a little bit. If we're trying to simplify the game for a new audience, we should focus on the high-risk, high-scoring and big-hitting nature of T20, and purely for the sake of the new audience, we should as much as we can to ensure a high-scoring affair.

The bottom line is that the USACA will need some time to win over local American fans. Hopefully after the American T20 League takes off, the board will then have little trouble inviting other Test-playing teams with a whole new generation of red-blooded American cricket lovers to increase the popularity, validity and growth of the tournament and American cricket in general.
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You made some excellent points there. One thing though, is that while I agree it should not be a "Cricket vs Baseball" thing, North Americans will learn best from comparing and contrasting the two sports. I know I did, at least.
 
Cricket Canuck said:
You made some excellent points there. One thing though, is that while I agree it should not be a "Cricket vs Baseball" thing, North Americans will learn best from comparing and contrasting the two sports. I know I did, at least.
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Compare and contrast, yes, but cricket shouldn't try to one-up baseball. The American public will almost certainly compare cricket to baseball anyway. Perhaps the USACA and Cricket Holdings can use that to their advantage when advertising cricket.
 
troll3y said:
Compare and contrast, yes, but cricket shouldn't try to one-up baseball. The American public will almost certainly compare cricket to baseball anyway. Perhaps the USACA and Cricket Holdings can use that to their advantage when advertising cricket.
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I'm hearing that the people involved in the USAT20 League has hit legal issues and it may be dead as of right now... which utterly and absolutely sucks if it's true..

I'll try to find the article... but it was a couple of days ago...
 
Duffy33 said:
ok here's an article on a T20 league coming to the US :

http://www.espncricinfo.com/usa/content/story/447810.html

and here is the article on the Legal issues... if true I don't see T20 coming to North America anytime soon :
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Sports/12-Dec-2010/USACA-dragged-into-court?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed: pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Sports (The Nation : Sports News)
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Oh boy.

Where is Don Lockerbie nowadays? I haven't heard his name mentioned in a long, long time.
 
troll3y said:
Compare and contrast, yes, but cricket shouldn't try to one-up baseball. The American public will almost certainly compare cricket to baseball anyway. Perhaps the USACA and Cricket Holdings can use that to their advantage when advertising cricket.
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Indeed, I remember when MLS was trying to get a foothold it was comparing itself to American Football. Pretty much the campaign went along the lines of "everything you love about American Football exists in Soccer, etc.". So I can definitely see Cricket going the same route, especially because the comparisons are more obvious than between soccer and football.
 
Unfortunately there is a 'lot' of litigation going on at the moment. I covered this a month ago on a coaches group elsewhere and the situation is not improving!
 
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