‘So complicated for them’: Americans don’t understand cricket - but they’re into it

Shane Warne’s one-time spin twin Tim May was shocked when he walked into a Texas bar and saw cricket on the big screen.

“I’ve never, ever seen anything like that,” May said from Austin, where he has been a long-time resident following his playing days.

The USA players scored a remarkable victory over Pakistan.Credit: AP

The former Test off-spinner has been taken by the cut-through the Twenty20 World Cup is gaining off the back of remarkable success by the USA team playing matches in their home country.

There was a nearly invisible start to the tournament, which began on June 2 in the USA, with the States hosting 16 early-round matches and the Caribbean hosting 39.

May said interest exploded when the USA beat Pakistan on June 7 and made it through to the next stage, also automatically qualifying for the 2026 T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka as one of the top eight teams in this tournament.

“Boom, the majority of people are into it,” May said. “Many haven’t any idea what’s going on. They don’t understand, it’s so complicated for them. But they’re into it.”

There was a flood of media interest following the victory over Pakistan, highlighted by ESPN’s SportsCenter leading with the USA victory and ICC commentator Andrew Leonard appearing on CNN World Sport to discuss the remarkable result.

Social media also lit up, with US senate majority leader Chuck Schumer tweeting: “An incredible upset, a historic win for the USA! A big moment for New York’s own Aaron Jones!”

The New York Times ran two cricket articles on Wednesday, with the lead item’s headline stating: “Unlikely World Cup Victories Raise Cricket’s Profile in U.S.”

It featured Harmeet Singh, 31, one of five USA players born in India. Only four players in the 15-man USA squad were born in America, with two of Indian and two of Caribbean heritage.

US players Saurabh Nethralvakar, left, and Harmeet Singh celebrate their triumph.Credit: AP

“I could never have seen cricket growing as much as it has,” the former Indian under-19 spinner said. He moved to the USA in 2020 to reignite his cricket career.

A quick explainer below the main article offered a superficial guide of why cricket is not baseball, and quoted Trinidadian Marxist thinker C. L. R. James, who wrote in his 1963 cricket memoir Beyond a Boundary: “Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belongs with theatre, ballet, opera and the dance.”

A major drawback for cricket in the USA is a lack of facilities, with baseball fields too small to host a proper match.

Tim May during his Test playing days.

As a result, May said that while his home city of Austin has 40 cricket teams, dominated by players of South Asian and Caribbean heritage, most play with a taped tennis ball on whatever open space they can find.

Cricket was once the most popular sport in America. According to The Smithsonian, the first record of a match in America was in 1751, when the New-York Gazette reported on a match played between a London XI and one from New York City. American founding father Benjamin Franklin took a copy of the 1744 rules of cricket to the US in 1754.

The first international was played between the USA and Canada in Manhattan in 1844, which once had cricket fields in Central Park. President Abraham Lincoln was a cricket fan who reportedly turned out to watch Chicago play Milwaukee in 1849.

The American Civil War changed all that when troops who were moving to battlefields found it easier to play an early version of baseball on the rough terrain rather than try to prepare pitches.

But cricket hung on, with Don Bradman using a private 1932 tour of the United States and Canada for his honeymoon.

Don Bradman plays in New York against a West Indian team.Credit: Getty Images

He met baseball superstar Babe Ruth at a baseball game in New York, with the New York World Telegram reporting: “The Babe was surprised by Bradman’s lack of height and weight.”

The Australians also played against a Hollywood team captained by former England Test cricketer-turned-actor Sir Charles Aubrey Smith that included Boris Karloff of Frankenstein fame.

An important advance in US cricket came last year when Major League Cricket, backed by wealthy entrepreneurs of largely Indian heritage, was launched. Four of the six teams are run by IPL franchises while Washington Freedom are supported by Cricket NSW and the San Francisco Unicorns by Cricket Victoria.

Officials from NSW and Victoria were pleasantly surprised by the standard. Half the players in each team must be USA-qualified.

A remarkable 47 players from across the squads in the T20 World Cup have signed up to play in this year’s Major League Cricket, the national US cricket league, immediately after the T20 World Cup, including a number of Australians. Four have joined the Unicorns, led by Test captain Pat Cummins, as well as Jake Fraser-McGurk, Josh Inglis and Matt Short, a dual BBL player of the year.

One of the lead investors in the San Francisco team, Anand Rajaraman, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur who moved from Chennai and obtained a computer science PhD at Stanford University, said he was “over the moon” with the success of the T20 World Cup in the US.

“It was clearly our goal when we started MLC to help progress the cause of USA cricket by bringing in top-quality players to move to the US, like [former New Zealand all-rounder] Cory Anderson, for example, as well as enable the US players to play against the top players in the world in Major League cricket.

“And our belief was that this would pay off over the years, the quality of the US cricket team would go up. Now, what has been a pleasant surprise for us is how quickly that has happened.”

Former England World Cup winner Liam Plunkett, who now lives in the US, is part of Major League Cricket.Credit:

The International Cricket Council has been delighted with the response in the US, headlined by more than 200,000 people attending the matches, including three crowds of more than 30,000 for India’s games at the now disassembled 34,000 seat pop-up stadium on New York’s Long Island.

There are no more ICC events programmed for the US in the ICC’s Future Tours Program, which runs until 2031. However, the ICC and Cricket USA will continue to promote the sport through schools and other grassroots campaigns leading into the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, where cricket will make a return. It was part of the 1900 Olympics.

While there are claims that cricket participation has risen from 30,000 to 200,000 over the past decade, a major problem with cricket growing in the USA has been tumultuous administration.

There is also the issue of how many people can access the World Cup broadcast in the US. The rights to the T20 World Cup were sold to Willow TV, the successful niche cricket streaming service, which has developed a strong expat following in North America, connecting to about 4 million homes.

India played Pakistan in front of more than 34,000 fans in New York.Credit: Getty

“We would love to get the games on ESPN or other broadcast outlets,” Anand Rajaraman said. “The challenge for this has been that cricket is still a niche sport here in the US.

“ESPN and all the big networks are not quite ready yet to give us the air time. The sport has to earn the right over the next few years by becoming more popular here.

“Willow is willing to share the rights with ESPN if they ask.”

Having lost their first Super Eight match against undefeated South Africa by 18 runs in Antigua early on Thursday morning (AEST), the USA’s next game is against the West Indies in Barbados on Saturday morning (AEST).

There is a cricket affinity between the USA and the West Indies best highlighted by Aaron Jones, the US batsman who hit 10 sixes in the opening match of the tournament, against Canada, to claim a high-scoring victory that set his team on the path to greater success.

Born in the US, Jones grew up in the Caribbean playing for Barbados, with some of the current West Indian players as teammates.

There will be no love lost on Saturday as the USA team attempt to give their new-found fans even more to cheer about.

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