By Ian Omoro

Cricket, like in most other places, came to America with its British colonists who crossed the Atlantic. It was first mentioned that the sport was played on the American subcontinent in 1709. A match between a London squad and a New York team in Manhattan was reported in the New York Gazette and the Weekly Post Boy in 1751. It was the first time a cricket match in North America was being mentioned in public.

One of the founding fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, was instrumental in the formalization of cricket’s rules in America in 1754 after he returned from England with a copy of the 1744 Laws, the sport’s official rulebook. It is also known that in 1849, Abraham Lincoln, another well-known American president, went to a Chicago vs. Milwaukee cricket match.

The highly popular bat-and-ball sport of cricket will make its much-awaited Olympic comeback in the United States of America (USA) in 2028 when it is incorporated into the Summer Games schedule in Los Angeles. Cricket hasn’t been on the Olympic schedule since it was included in the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris.

In the United States, cricket isn’t even the most popular bat-and-ball sport. That would be baseball, America’s national pastime. Cricket is not as popular in America as other sports like basketball, American football, soccer (football), rugby, ice hockey, and a few more. Cricket is primarily limited to the South Asian and Caribbean diaspora in America as a sport.

However, things are changing swiftly, and the 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, which the US and the West Indies co-hosted, was a huge success, proving cricket’s increasing popularity in the US.

A closer look into cricket’s history in the USA reveals a completely different picture, despite the sport’s apparent recent association with the country. The two have a lengthy history together that begins in the 1700s, long before baseball as we know it today was even invented.

Remarkably, the United States and Canada played cricket together in 1844 in the first-ever international match ever documented. The St George’s Cricket Club grounds in New York hosted the two-day match, which was postponed to three days during a rainstorm. Even though the conditions were questionable, the Canadian cricket team won the match by 23 runs.

The third batsman for Team USA, George Wheatcroft, was late for his fourth-inning batting appearance and only showed up 20 minutes after his team’s final wicket was taken. The Canadians refused to listen to the hosts’ argument that he ought to bat and the game should go on.

David Winckworth became the first dual international player in cricket at that time. He was Canada’s highest scorer in both innings of the match and took four wickets with his fast bowling in the first innings. In 1845, he played for Canada in the two games that followed, one in Montreal and the other in New York. In both games, the Northerners emerged victorious.