Cricket in the United States is a sport played at the amateur, club, intercollegiate and international competition levels with little popularity, with 200,000 players (<0.1% of the population) across the country. Major League Cricket is the highest level of domestic T20 cricket currently played in America, with T20 being the format of the game that much of the recent growth in American cricket is occurring in.
In 2006 it was estimated that 30,000 people in the United States play or watch cricket annually. By 2017, this figure had risen to 200,000 people playing cricket in 6,000 teams. Cricket in the United States is not as popular as baseball and is not as popular among as large a fraction of the population as it is within either the Commonwealth nations or the other ICC full member (or Test cricket) nations. There are at least two historical reasons for the relative obscurity of cricket within the United States. One reason was the 19th-century-rise of the summer time bat and ball sport now called baseball, which has displaced cricket as a popular pastime. Another reason was that in 1909 when the ICC was originally organized as the Imperial Cricket Conference it was open only to Commonwealth nations and thereby excluded the U.S. from participating in the sport at the highest level.
Nevertheless, in 1965 the U.S. was admitted to the renamed ICC as an associate member and the sport grew in popularity in the second half of the 20th century. An oft mentioned reason for the growing popularity of cricket is the growing population of immigrants to the U.S. who come from cricket playing nations.
With the launching of the United States Youth Cricket Association in 2010, a more focused effort to bring the game to American schools was begun, with the intention of broadening cricket's fan base beyond expatriates and their children.
ESPN has been stepping up its coverage of cricket in recent years, buying the cricket website Cricinfo in 2007, and broadcasting the final of the 2014 ICC World Twenty20 competition, the 2014 Indian Premier League, English County Championship games, and international Test cricket.
In 2021, Minor League Cricket, a professional Twenty20 cricket league sanctioned by USA Cricket, began play. Major League Cricket is planning to launch its first season in 2023. In addition, various championships and pathways are being offered for youth cricketers, such as the MLC Jr. Championship.
History
Cricket was played by British colonists in North America by the start of the 18th century. Archived references to cricket played in America date from 1709. A New York newspaper from 1739 contains an advertisement for cricket players and the first documented competition occurred in 1751 in Manhattan. According to William Byrd II's diary, cricket was played on the slave plantations of Virginia, including on his Westover estate among neighbors and slaves. By 1793, Dartmouth College students were playing cricket on the Green. Philadelphia was the crucible of North American cricket and remains so today. Haverford College formed a cricket team in 1833, generally accepted as the first cricket club exclusively for Americans. Haverford and the University of Pennsylvania formed a strong rivalry, with the first match played on May 7, 1864, believed to be start of the third-oldest intercollegiate sporting contest in America, after the 1852 Harvard-Yale crew and 1859 Amherst-Williams baseball matches. Haverford and Penn then proceeded to play each other for three consecutive years until 1869, when the Haverford faculty banned cricket away from their college grounds. From 1875 and through 1880, Haverford College, Columbia College and University of Pennsylvania fielded a varsity elevens, which played a few matches each year against each other and other club teams.
In 1881, Penn, Harvard College, Haverford College, Princeton College (then known as College of New Jersey), and Columbia College formed The Intercollegiate Cricket Association, which Cornell University later joined. During the 44 years that The Intercollegiate Cricket Association existed (1881 through 1924) Penn won The Intercollegiate Cricket Association championship (the de facto national championship) 23 times (3 shared with Haverford and Harvard, 1 shared with Haverford and Cornell, and 1 shared with just Haverford), Haverford won such championship 19 times (3 shared with Penn and Harvard, 1 shared with Penn and Cornell, and 1 shared with Penn), and Harvard won it 6 times, none after 1899 (3 shared with Haverford and Penn).