A cricket World Cup comes to America

In 1994, when America hosted the FIFA men’s football World Cup, just 20% of Americans even knew it was happening in their country. Today, nearly a third of Americans who follow sports describe themselves as “avid” fans of soccer, no doubt helped by two consecutive World Cup victories, in 2015 and 2019, by their women’s team.

Three decades after football’s first big American outing, cricket is starting its own journey in the world’s most valuable sports market. In June 2024 the United States will, jointly with the West Indies, host the men’s Twenty20 World Cup—the shortest and most popular form of cricket, in which each game lasts three hours, not five days. Around a third of the 55 matches will take place in America. The American team, as host, automatically qualifies for the tournament—its first-ever top-tier competition—and is hoping it will be a coming-out party for American cricket.

For most Americans, cricket has (not unreasonably) a reputation as a sport with impenetrable rules. For now, it remains a niche interest pursued mostly by immigrants and their children. Indeed, the majority of the American cricket team consists of players with roots in South Asia and the Caribbean. But that is still a group numbering some 6.5m people in America, a sizeable audience.

A new professional tournament in America called Major League Cricket (MLC) debuted in 2023 to largely positive, if slightly bemused, media coverage. MLC intends to organise its event back to back with the World Cup in 2024 to make it a “summer of cricket” in America. And the hope is that the momentum will build from there: in October the International Olympic Committee announced that both men’s and women’s cricket would be included at the Olympic games in Los Angeles in 2028.

Cricket is not the only sport trying to raise its profile in America. In 2022 the United States hosted the World Athletics Championship for the first time. The next FIFA men’s football World Cup, in 2026, will be hosted jointly by the United States, Canada and Mexico. And the rugby World Cup will be staged in America for the first time in 2031.

The fact that the United States team is unlikely to progress beyond the group stages of the cricket World Cup is beside the point. A cricket match framed against the skyline of a big American city is bound to generate publicity for the sport. And for the United States squad, playing against the world’s best teams—with a global audience—is itself an opportunity unlike any it has had before.

Building a new audience for a sport is, after all, less like the action-packed Twenty20 version of the game, and more closely resembles its five-day incarnation, the Test match: a slow accumulation of small victories and close shaves that is a test of endurance and determination as much as it is of skill. ■

Leo Mirani, Asia correspondent, The Economist, Mumbai