Question from a baseball fan...

[Cricketdude]

But America will only ever be into twenty20 cricket if they do get into it. They will never wait 5 days for a test match to end.

 

[Broken Arm Bob]

But America will only ever be into twenty20 cricket if they do get into it. They will never wait 5 days for a test match to end.

I think Twenty20 or ODI are the best bets at first. For one thing, there's such an intensity in how many hours Americans work that we just don't have the time to watch an enitre day of a test match.

But one thing that I've been surprised about is how cricket appears to operate under a tournament-style fashion. MLB, the highest level of baseball playing, has a 162 game schedule from early april to september, plus the postseason month of october to round out the championship decisons. On any given day during the season, at least one game can be found on television. People in the US pay attention to the stats and rankings all season long. I was surprised to learn that the Twenty20 Cup in England only lasts two and a half weeks, or something like that. Doesn't the IPL only run between May and mid-June? Americans follow multi-day golf tournements and tennis tournaments, and follow their favorite baseball team over the course of a series (usually three games, but sometimes four). If they miss a day, they tune in to ESPN or read about it in the next day's paper. I think, given what I've observed in cricket schedules that a national team plays an international test match once a month or once every few weeks, that Americans could certainly turn their ears to it on a occasional basis. But 162 test matches a year would never work in the US

 

[Skater]

One Day cricket does not have long tournaments but First Class does. The English County Championship starts in mid-April and ends in mid-September.

 

[Broken Arm Bob]

One Day cricket does not have long tournaments but First Class does. The English County Championship starts in mid-April and ends in mid-September.

And I can't wait to root for the Brown Caps this year I'm hoping that I can catch the games on BBC online radio... I'm hoping that only England's international matches are "blacked out" from the online streaming in the US!

 

[Skater]

A good choice. Surrey are a modern club, the richest county, and have a good history. They won the first Twenty20 Cup in 2003 without losing a game.

The season officially starts on the 9th April, when there is a traditional four-day game between the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC, holders of the laws of cricket) and the county champions, in this case Durham, at Lord's.

 

[sohum]

Twenty20 could be a format that would fit feasibly into the general American sport format. The main issue would be raising enough interests to have enough teams to make a playoff possible. If there are only about 8 teams, then there's no point in having playoffs. You've got to start somewhere, though.

One way it could be started is by holding a Twenty20 tournament such as the IPL in the US for a season and at the same time launch some sort of domestic T20 league. That can eventually be expanded to create more franchises because let's face it, the only way it's gonna work in the US is with a franchise-based system.

 

[Broken Arm Bob]

Twenty20 could be a format that would fit feasibly into the general American sport format. The main issue would be raising enough interests to have enough teams to make a playoff possible. If there are only about 8 teams, then there's no point in having playoffs. You've got to start somewhere, though.

One way it could be started is by holding a Twenty20 tournament such as the IPL in the US for a season and at the same time launch some sort of domestic T20 league. That can eventually be expanded to create more franchises because let's face it, the only way it's gonna work in the US is with a franchise-based system.

No offense, but I disagree. I think Twenty20 is great, but I don't think a domestic Twenty20 league in the US will ever work, at least not as an attempt as a primary introduction to cricket in the country. The reason is that cricket, though different enough from baseball, is still way too similar to coexist as as a summer sport. Baseball is too engrained into the culture. The four big sports in the US are American football, ice hockey, basketball and baseball. These first three are winter sports, and except for April-May when it shares the show with hockey and basketball, and late Sep-Oct when it shares the show with football, baseball has complete free reign over our summer sports world (soccer is big as a participation sport, but only those with specialized interests follow the professional game). There are major and minor league and sandlot baseball teams, plus Little League and t-ball and recreational slowpitch softball for the grownups. There simply isn't any room to share with, what would be percieved by the American masses, a "foriegn" sport.

Then there's the problem of developing talent in US cricket to support something like the IPL. Cricket utilizes the same skills and kinesthetic intelligences as baseball. In order to play both games, you have to have sharp reaction time, remarkable eyesight, and ability to play a chess-like game without caving in to overwhelming pressure. I would venture to say that any decent cricket player would have made a fine baseball/softball player if he/she had been born in the baseball-playing world (US, Japan, Cuba, Mexico, Canada, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Korea, etc.), and vice-versa. An individual in the United States who is blessed with the right gifts to play a game like baseball or cricket would be a fool to sacrifice a potential multi-million US$ career in a game played by the domestic masses for a little-followed imported sport that quite likely won't catch on.

The Canadian cricket organization has the right idea. I've read that they've been granted money from the Canadian government to develop a league. But they're being intelligent about it, and the league they're developing isn't an outdoor cricket code. It's indoor cricket. This version, I think, has a lot of potential as a professional and participation sport in North America. If indoor cricket could be associated as a cold weather, indoor game for baseball enthusiasts, then I think there's a bright future for the growth of the sport in the US.

I'm writing this as I'm watching the live scorecard at cricinfo... Go NZ!

 

[Skater]

The USA would not be able to go any further with cricket if its only interest in it was indoors. Cricket is affected by conditions more than any other sport and for it you have to be outside. If it is cloudy, the ball will swing in the air, if the pitch is flat, it will be perfect for batting, and so on. It is fine if indoor cricket becomes popular, but as a result the USA would be excluded from the rest of the cricketing world. Canada played at the World Cup in 2007 and the USA at the Champions Trophy in 2004, so they have been seen in the big tournaments.

 

[sohum]

No offense, but I disagree. I think Twenty20 is great, but I don't think a domestic Twenty20 league in the US will ever work, at least not as an attempt as a primary introduction to cricket in the country. The reason is that cricket, though different enough from baseball, is still way too similar to coexist as as a summer sport. Baseball is too engrained into the culture. The four big sports in the US are American football, ice hockey, basketball and baseball. These first three are winter sports, and except for April-May when it shares the show with hockey and basketball, and late Sep-Oct when it shares the show with football, baseball has complete free reign over our summer sports world (soccer is big as a participation sport, but only those with specialized interests follow the professional game). There are major and minor league and sandlot baseball teams, plus Little League and t-ball and recreational slowpitch softball for the grownups. There simply isn't any room to share with, what would be percieved by the American masses, a "foriegn" sport.

Cricket wouldn't be trying to become a mainstream sport, though. All it needs is a toehold so that people can start becoming familiar around it. Which is why they cannot start with a full-fledged league before developing some interest around the game. Remember that there is already a first class league of some sort in the US, so it is not as if all the infrastructure is being laid down anew. It would take an effort to convert it into a franchise-based system, though.

Then there's the problem of developing talent in US cricket to support something like the IPL. Cricket utilizes the same skills and kinesthetic intelligences as baseball. In order to play both games, you have to have sharp reaction time, remarkable eyesight, and ability to play a chess-like game without caving in to overwhelming pressure. I would venture to say that any decent cricket player would have made a fine baseball/softball player if he/she had been born in the baseball-playing world (US, Japan, Cuba, Mexico, Canada, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Korea, etc.), and vice-versa. An individual in the United States who is blessed with the right gifts to play a game like baseball or cricket would be a fool to sacrifice a potential multi-million US$ career in a game played by the domestic masses for a little-followed imported sport that quite likely won't catch on.

That is why most of the American national cricket team players are imports from the Carribbean, India and Pakistan. You need something to start, though. It's taken these teams decades to develop a grassroots interest in cricket, so it would be wrong to think that could happen overnight. It appears to me that what you are suggesting is that professional baseball players play cricket during their offseason. I don't think that would work because those same players would be fools to throw their multi-million dollar contracts into disarray by risking injury playing cricket in the off-season.