Will hosting the T20 World Cup kickstart cricket's growth in the US ...

The 2024 Men’s T20 World Cup may be the first edition of the tournament to feature the United States, but those overseeing the country’s cricketing masterplan want it to be just the start for the sport in North America.

On the pitch, the tournament will feature plenty of firsts. There will be a record 20 teams, 55 games and a trio of nations making their debut in the competition after Canada and Uganda qualified.

Perhaps most noteworthy, though, is the T20 World Cup being co-hosted by the West Indies and, also for the first time, the US. Developing the sport in the country has become a priority for the International Cricket Council (ICC), which hopes its decision to bring one of its flagship tournaments to the States will be a springboard for commercial opportunities and new market growth that cricket has never seen before.

“This is very much a long-term view,” explains ICC chief commercial officer Anurag Dahiya. “[The Men’s T20 World Cup] was never meant to be an event that we take to the US and immediately start cashing the cheques.

“How we look at this event is an attempt to really start a new chapter in the US.”

‘It’s not just about the fancy stadium in New York’

According to Dahiya, various surveys and research estimate the number of cricket fans in the US to be between 30 million and 50 million. The number of South Asian Americans is now north of six million, while nearly 500,000 South Asian students attend university in the States. That gives the ICC and USA Cricket a solid starting point, but for the game to really make a lasting impression it has to cast the net wider.

“[Cricket] needs to be taken to mainstream Americans,” says USA Cricket chairman Venu Pisike. “We want to grow the sport outside of the expats.”

This year’s T20 World Cup should help to attract casual fans, complementing ongoing efforts to get more children picking up bat and ball. This has seen the ICC and USA Cricket partner with schools to get cricket into physical education programmes, including around 200 teachers being trained up on the game across Florida, New York and Texas.

The goal is to get a million school kids playing the sport in time for the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics, where cricket is set to return for the first time in 128 years. The ICC is also leaning into its Criiio initiative, a variation of cricket that can be played in parks, on the street or at the beach using any bat and ball and has stripped back rules.

“That exposure is the first step to understanding what the sport is, what the skills involved are,” says Dahiya. “With this World Cup, it’s not just about that fancy stadium we built in New York. What will last longer is what we’re doing with communities.”

Pisike adds that the awareness generated by the T20 World Cup will help Americans get to know the sport, the following, the fanbase and the intensity.

“We are hopeful that will give us an opportunity to make it a little easier to take the sport to the communities,” he says.

Plans are underway in the US to develop more homegrown professional players (Getty Images)

Can the US be competitive?

USA Cricket wants to be a full ICC member by 2030, which would allow the national team to play sanctioned Test matches and automatically qualify to compete in one-day internationals (ODIs) and Twenty20 internationals (T20Is). Other benefits include extra funding, voting rights and guaranteed regular fixtures against elite countries.

Getting there will be a tall order and involves meeting criteria spanning governance, infrastructure, development plans and domestic programmes. The US national team will also have to demonstrate it can mix it with top-tier nations.

There is still a long way to go in that respect. In the country’s second ever ODI, the US lost to Australia by nine wickets in the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy after being bowled out for a lowly 65. The Aussies, awash with talent, knocked off the target in less than eight overs.

Pisike says he is focusing on the performance of the national team, attracting new fans and securing new sponsorships. Still, he concedes that USA Cricket is working with “limited resources” and notes that it relies on the ICC as its main source of funding. However, he says the global governing body remains committed to the cause.

“The ICC wants to invest into the market apart from their general funding,” continues Pisike. “They have an interest in investing into USA Cricket.”

The ICC is also trying to help the US, and other less established cricket nations, be more competitive on the international stage. Its regional members in the Americas, including Brazil and Mexico, will be involved in a high-performance seminar, covering everything from training methods and strategy insights.

If the US does become a full ICC member by the end of the decade, it will be the first country to do so since Ireland and Afghanistan in 2017.

The US’s appearance at the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy highlighted the performance gap between the country and cricket’s elite nations (Getty Images)

Major League Cricket – the second biggest franchise league in the world?

Away from the international scene, USA Cricket has lofty ambitions for Major League Cricket (MLC), the domestic T20 franchise competition backed by American Cricket Enterprises (ACE) that played its first season last July.

The six-club competition has piqued the interest of Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises, with owners of the Chennai Super Kings, Delhi Capitals, Kolkata Knight Riders and Mumbai Indians all controlling MLC teams. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella also co-owns the Seattle Orcas.

MLC will return in July and be played at two venues in Grand Prairie, Texas and Morrisville, North Carolina. Texas are the only team to have a home stadium, though there are plans to build grounds for other franchises. IT services company Cognizant also signed on as the league’s inaugural title sponsor in March.

Further down the track, MLC has confirmed it will expand from 25 matches to 34 by 2025 and intends to be a ten-team league in the not-too-distant future. MLC chief exe­cutive Vijay Srinivasan told The Guardian that the league is also keen to play in June, meaning it will clash with England’s T20 Blast, though it would leave The Hundred free to take place unopposed from late July until late August.

“[MLC] will generate more homegrown fans supporting the local players and create the superstars from home,” says Pisike. “That will eventually motivate more youth to [play cricket] and create a following and build resources.”

Pisike adds that having the backing of IPL owners, as well as several other wealthy Indian businessmen, demonstrates “the huge potential to commercialise the sport in the country”. He even thinks MLC can become “the second biggest franchise league in the world”, behind only the IPL.

Dahiya agrees that MLC “sets the US apart” from the 95 other ICC associate members, noting that the success of cricket in the country will largely come from grassroots and domestic efforts, rather than hosting flagship international tournaments.

“That has to be the bedrock on which, ultimately, the sport will grow and thrive,” he says.

Beyond MLC, Pisike says USA Cricket is overhauling the country’s domestic structure. Local leagues have been in place for decades but are disconnected. The aim is to “streamline the pathways” and create a framework to develop homegrown professional players.

The US clinched a historic T20I series victory against Bangladesh ahead of the T20 World Cup (USA Cricket)

A “shot in the arm” for commercial conversations

Dahiya believes that brands have a key role to play in “breaking the stereotypes” around cricket, whether they be around overly complex rules or assuming it is only an “Indian centric or South Asian sport”.

Of course, India remains comfortably the game’s biggest market but holding the T20 World Cup in the US has helped open the door for new partnerships. Coca-Cola is now a global partner of the ICC, having initially focused on the South Asian market, and Indian dairy giant Amul has inked a short-term deal with USA Cricket for the tournament.

“A lot of the conversations with prospective brands [and] clients that could be part of the ICC family, they’ve received a big shot in the arm from the [T20 World Cup] being [in the US],” says Dahiya.

“It’s simple things like brand managers being able to come to games and for the first time actually see firsthand what cricket is, what fans are like. So that’s a great opportunity to expose our sport to the marketing community in the US.”

Existing ICC partners are also getting more involved stateside. DP World is donating cricket equipment for local club, schools and academies around New York, for example. The hope is activations like that are a precursor to new commercial deals in the long term.

“The US is an extremely important market already for us,” continues Dahiya. “In broadcast terms, it’s one of the top three, four markets. A number of our partners are US headquartered and have been in the past as well.

“Often these partnerships have been driven through their South Asia operations or other international operations. So, while there is that linkage, it’s not necessarily coming out of the US yet.

“We’d love to see not just broadcast and media rights revenue grow but also get a more robust ecosystem going in the US, which can sustain our sport not just at the ICC level but domestically as well and for all our members.”

‘Everybody wants cricket to be successful in the US’

If the next four years go to plan, buzz around cricket in the US could reach a crescendo for LA28. Pisike believes the Olympics could even seal the game’s status as a mainstream sport in the country. 

“We are in the Olympics, what else do you need to grow the sport?” he says. “This will be a very good opportunity for us to make cricket mainstream.”

As for hosting men’s ICC competitions on its own, the US will have to wait until at least 2031, though Dahiya says “maybe” a women’s event could head there during the 2028 to 2031 tournament cycle. Until then, the governing body is prepared to draw inspiration from “wherever it’s available” to ensure cricket makes its mark.

“We recognise the success Formula One has enjoyed through different strategies that they’ve adopted in the US,” continues Dahiya. “Ultimately, we’ve got to chart our own path. We’ve got to recognise our relative strengths.”

Addressing potential weaknesses and challenges will also be important. For starters, the shape of a cricket ground means most US sports facilities aren’t suitable for staging matches, potentially hampering participation and meaning more purpose-built venues will have to be constructed.

USA Cricket, which was only founded in 2017 and is still not the certified national governing body for cricket in the country, is also in a state of leadership flux after terminating the contract of its chief executive Noor Mohammad Murad in March.

That decision reportedly outraged the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and saw the ICC warn USA Cricket to get its house in order amid concerns over governance and management practices. USA Cricket has said it is taking the first step in updating its constitution to ‘meet the standards of the USOPC’.

It is an unwelcome distraction at what is an important moment for the US, whose men’s team recently pulled off a major upset by winning a three-match T20 series against Bangladesh, a full ICC member.

For now, attention will stick to matters on the field. The US’s performance at the T20 World Cup won’t determine cricket’s fortunes in the country, but it will be the first major indication of whether the sport will truly catch on.

“Everybody wants cricket to be successful in the US for the interest of cricket in the world,” says Pisike.

“The dynamics will change once cricket becomes one of the mainstream sports.”