When Canada and the US played their first international cricket match

As the Fifa World Cup soccer kicks off in Qatar a few weeks from now (November 20), the ongoing T20 World Cup cricket in Australia, particularly in the context of the just-concluded marquee India-Pakistan game, is a reminder of how much the once-colonial game has grown and spread.

Football of course remains the world's No.1 sport and a game with almost universal appeal, with more than two billion fans in 200 countries around the globe. Fédération internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sports governing body, has 211 national associations, more than the number of countries in the world. In contrast, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has only 108 members, but thanks to the weight the Indian subcontinent pulls in terms of population, the game now has almost as many followers.

In terms of revenue as reflected in franchises though, American sports rule the roost thanks to the financial weight the United States pulls rather than fan following in sheer numbers. Although "American Football," a rugby-like game, has very little following outside the US and Canada, the National Football League (NFL) racks up $ 16 billion in annual revenues, followed by America's Major League Baseball ($ 10 billion) and National Basketball Association ($ 8 billion). But the Indian Premier League, now considered the fastest-growing sports league in the world, has ticked up to #4 closing in $7billion in revenues, overtaking the English Premier League (EPL) and other soccer leagues like La Liga. Take similar copycat leagues in major cricket playing nations, and it's possible that cricket will soon rake in even more lolly.

Small wonder then that even the United States is lining up its own league, powered by a growing expat population from cricket playing nations, particularly from the Indian sub-continent and the Caribbean. While there has been a sad decline in West Indies as a cricketing power, as evidenced by its early exit from the T20 World Cup, it's conceivable that weight will shift further westward, although the US too, like UAE, failed to make the cut in Australia. Again, no surprise that the 2024 T20 World Cup is to be co-hosted by the West Indies and USA.

Most Americans tend to take a dim view of cricket. The late actor comedian Robin Williams once likened cricket to baseball on valium. But America is in fact the second home of cricket after England. The game came to America through their colonial forebears, the Brits, much before it arrived in India. Historic references to cricket in the United States include games in Georgia in 1737 and in Baltimore in 1754, the same year Benjamin Franklin brought a printed copy of cricket rules of play home to the Colonies, almost 100 years before the first book of baseball rules was published. Without doubt, baseball evolved from cricket.