Cricket starts to make noise in the United States
Liz Clarke writes in the Washington Post that though a majority of Americans still don’t understand the rules of cricket, the sport is gradually gaining popularity in New York, Florida and Washington
Carlyle Laurie
25-Feb-2013
Liz Clarke writes in the Washington Post that though a majority of Americans still don’t understand the rules of cricket, the sport is gradually gaining popularity in New York, Florida and Washington. Some have even said cricket is America's fastest-growing sport, with 15 million fans and an estimated 200,000 players.
To most Americans, cricket is a puzzlement. Even savvy sports fans know little more than it’s traditionally played in white trousers, involves a flat wooden bat and lots of running back and forth. Fewer still realize it has a rich tradition in the United States; it predates by 140 years the national pastime of baseball, which is cricket’s direct descendant.
But cricket hotbeds exist — particularly in New York, Florida and California — spurred in the late 1970s by immigrants from the West Indies, which ruled the sport at the time. It was fueled anew as a wave of workers from south Asia arrived for the tech boom of the late-1980s and ’90s.