I love cricket

It is no surprise to most of you who know me that I'm a sports fanatic. I follow most of the major sports in America (including soccer and lacrosse) at professional and usually at college levels. Over the last two years I picked up an affinity for cricket.

Before, we as Americans go blasting such nancy sports as soccer and cricket, let me point out a few quick things...

To the best of my ability I discern (based on almanacs, online encyclopedias, sports journalism) that the most popular sports in the world are these:

1) Soccer. There is really no competition here. It's even the most played sport in America with something like 10 times the number of recreation leagues of any other sport including baseball...

2) Cricket. It's hard to believe for a country that is completely sports obsessed and we don't even know the rules, but cricket is wildly popular. Think about the popularity of baseball in USA, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Venezuela combined and that is ALMOST the popularity of cricket in India alone. Add to that Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka and this subcontinent has nearly 2 billion fans without even thinking about africa and europe!

3) Basketball. This is completely the result of 1992 dream team. Before that, no one cared about basketball outside the United States. We used to send our college kids to collect our gold medal in the olympics every fourth year. After refereeing blunders in 1972 and 1988 that gave the Soviet Union basketball gold in the olympics the USA decided basketball needed to be a global sport. Actually, that's not how it worked. USA decided to assert itself in basketball and assembled the greatest team that will ever play the game of basketball and we collected our rightful gold medal while trouncing every opponent by an average of more than 33 points.

4) Baseball. We get this because USA, Japan, Korea, (some of China), and some of Latin America is completely gonzo for it. Funny enough, the only two countries that widely play cricket and baseball are Australia and Holland of all places...

5) Here is where things get tricky... Probably Rugby comes here, but it's a toss up between car racing, volleyball, Rugby, tennis, golf, hockey (field, roller, ice) and a few others. It's hard to classify everything.

Now, that being said. Let me give a few words of encouragement about cricket.

International cricket has a long history. That history, however, started in the United States! England can put that in their big ol' colonial pipe and smoke it! USA v. Canada was the first international cricket match 25-27 September 1844 in New York City. See article here (USA v Canada).

I'm very quick to remind my Indian colleagues about this when they make fun of America for not knowing how to play cricket. They can put that in their big ol' over populated south asian pipes and smoke it.

I don't mean to be so aggressive though. Fact of the matter is I actually LIKE cricket. In some sense the test match (that five day long version of it) is the best game in the world. One small mistake can determine a lot of things about the match. You've got to concentrate for a long time! It's like an entire baseball series (4 game) rolled into one match. A draw is a 2-2 split and a win is like a 3-1 split. Or if the second batting team wins by an innings a 4-0 split. I know most Indians are utterly shocked that I know how to play at all, and more shocked when I can hit the ball. I try to explain to them, that I grew up playing baseball, and a baseball is harder to hit. They didn't believe me until another American got to bat in a pick up game. I told him, just think of it like a baseball, but you can move around and hit it backwards if you want. He immediately started hitting the pitches. It is truly the single skill from baseball that translates. On the flip side, guys who can field cricket balls would be amazing fielders in baseball! They don't get to throw to a first baseman who can move. They have to hit a stationary set of wickets which aren't very big to get a man out. Also, they catch without the benefit of big baseball mits.

All told, I'm glad cricket is popular here. If you're into a game with a ton of strategy (baseball doesn't even come close, believe me, it just doesn't) then this is a great game. Turns out, it's a lot of fun to play too! I recommend the following thing for the United States...

After we win World Cup (and we will win it, just a matter of time now) we should concentrate on winning a world cricket tournament. We could win on batting alone! Then after that, we conquer rugby. After that our imperialism should be ended!
Long live cricket! Long live American cricket.

On a final note: Philly cricket. Philly, I'm counting on you to bring back USA cricket into a glorious team sport in America again.