The Fate of Cricket in the United States: Revisited

Over the past few decades, journalists and cable television reporters have increased their coverage of efforts by immigrants from South Asian and Caribbean nations to re-establish cricket in the United States. Scholars have contrasted its stunning growth and popularity during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in British colonies in South Asia and the West Indies with its failure to become a mainstream sport in the United States. This essay examines recent scholarship on the global diffusion of cricket and its competition with baseball in the nineteenth century and evaluates the sport’s growth in the United States since 1990. It also assesses its future prospects in America and throughout the world—especially the impact of the new Twenty/20 version of the game.