Major League Cricket will succeed if it avoids the demands for conformity that soccer proselytizers often employ. So far, it seems to be doing so.
One of the most annoying things about American soccer proselytizers is their insistence that soccer simply must catch on in the U.S. because it’s very popular elsewhere in the world. As David Harsanyi has written, “It seems to me that soccer’s most aggressive proponents always have a hint of ‘Why can’t we be more like Europe?’ in their case for the sport.” We reject this form of argumentation when it’s used in the service of welfare expansion or food regulation, and we should reject it when it’s used in the service of sports as well.
That form of argumentation is almost never used by the boosters of any other sport popular elsewhere in the world. Cricket, for example, is the world’s second-most-popular sport after soccer, and you never hear cricket fans hectoring Americans for not joining with Indians, Australians, Pakistanis, South Africans, New Zealanders, and our North American brethren in the Caribbean in enjoyment of their pastime. There’s a Eurocentrism with soccer boosters that most of them would probably not like to admit.
Nonetheless, cricket is coming to the U.S., in the form of Major League Cricket (MLC), which is scheduled to play its first season this summer. I first heard of it because George Mason University, my alma mater, is partnering with the league to build a new cricket facility on campus. The league got a write-up in the Economist on December 20. The tweet promoting the piece said, “Cricket is about to challenge baseball, and maybe what it means to be American, too,” suggesting that the article would apply the annoying soccer argument to cricket and try to shame Americans into enjoying this popular foreign game. But the piece doesn’t actually do that, and it sets a more realistic expectation for how a new sports league should succeed in the U.S.
The primary population of any significant size in the U.S. to which cricket currently appeals is immigrants from South Asia. The piece says there are about 5.5 million South Asians in America, and 4.6 million of them are of Indian origin. MLC is starting with six teams, located in Dallas, San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. It doesn’t take a deep knowledge of American demography to know what those six metropolitan areas have in common: high Indian populations (plus Seattle, home of Microsoft, whose Indian CEO Satya Nadella is one of the league’s top investors).
The league will likely start with a primarily Indian-American fanbase. The first season will only be 19 days (it would never be a lengthy season, by American standards, if it succeeds; the Indian Premier League, the wealthiest cricket league in the world with broadcast rights worth $6 billion, has a season of only two months). That will allow players that cricket fans already know from abroad to play for American teams. The Economist piece includes this bit towards the end, about players who have already joined smaller professional teams in the United States:
Perhaps American cricket does not even need a Doubleday narrative. After all, there are millions of cricket-mad South Asians and West Indians who are as American as any baseball fan. Their presence is a powerful enough incentive to lure the MLC investors. The new league, in turn, is already attracting people who would never otherwise have come to America.
People like Unmukt Chand, who led India’s under-19 team to a world cup victory, but in 2021 accepted a multi-year contract with the Silicon Valley team. Or Liam Plunkett, an English cricketer, who can now live closer to his American-born wife’s family by playing for Philadelphia. Cricketers go to England, Australia or India, too, but for a season, not for a lifetime. “There’s opportunities here,” says Shadley van Schalkwyk, a South African cricketer in Seattle. “Once you get over a few hurdles in the USA, there is a better finish line.”
Seen that way, it matters less whether 330m people think of cricket as American. By providing opportunity, the prospect of prosperity and, above all, a better future for migrants, the English sport is already imbued with the ideals upon which America was founded.
Three-hundred-thirty million people will never think of cricket as American (even though it was at one time enormously popular in the U.S. and the first-ever international cricket match was between the U.S. and Canada in 1844). A successful U.S. cricket league will not compete with the NFL or MLB. It will be a fun subculture that some people will enjoy and most will ignore. That’s not a put-down. The U.S. has many such subcultures, and it’s part of what makes this country great.
Major League Cricket should provide a good product for people who want it, without demanding that everyone care about it or celebrating lackluster TV ratings as if they are a huge success. It will succeed if it avoids the demands for conformity that soccer proselytizers often employ. So far, it seems to be doing so.