Cricket fans are often talking about what the International Cricket Council (ICC) can and should do to make cricket more popular around the world, how they should better manage the different formats of the game, how they should publicize it, and so on. And a lot of these points have merit, we’ll mention them as well, however, the sneaking suspicion remains that maybe cricket will forever remain in the shadow of football.
Still, what can we do to raise the popularity of this awesome sport among the many countries that are still indifferent toward it? Yes, as of now, cricket is the second most popular spectator sport in the word by the numbers, but that’s mostly because some of the countries it’s popular in are very big. And yes, there are many great online portals about cricket – you can easily find cricket news on Sportsbet.io, for example, but there are just as many if not more sports resources and portals that are fairly oblivious about cricket.
Cricket’s popularity today and throughout the years
Invented in England during the Saxon and Norman times, cricket is much older than most of the more popular spectator sports today. Additionally, there were times where it was officially the most popular sport around the world – most notably in the 18th century when England had popularized across all its colonies. At that time cricket was even the most popular sport in America, however, its popularity there waned around their Civil War and after it, cricket was replaced in popularity by baseball.
Today, cricket is the second most popular sport in the world behind football, however, it can be said that it’s second by far. Regardless of what the numbers say, the fact remains that cricket is popular in much fewer countries around the world and its popularity is only high because several of these countries are quite big.
Actionable steps that could raise the popularity of cricket
So, what can the ICC do and what can we, the audience and fans, do as well? There are many different points that have been brought up and attempted over the years, most of them – with questionable results. Here’s what the general consensus looks like so far:
- Popularize the sport on social media such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and others. If you go on any of these online media you can see countless official and fan clips alike – from games, with behind-the-scenes footage, and much more. There’s a fair bit about cricket as well, but it needs to be much more and done better if it’s to drive the sport’s popularity more.
- Expand the World Cup. Currently, the cricket World Cup series includes only 10 clubs. If it was bigger and made more attractive to audiences it would be doing a much better job at catching the attention of the currently uninterested.
- Introduce the T10 format at the international level. T20 is the most popular format currently, largely because it lasts “only” 3 hours. While that’s much more attractive to most audiences that the other popular cricket audiences, it’s still extremely long for the neutral viewer. A shorter format will make cricket infinitely more attractive to a wide audience.
Can the U.S. change the situation in a significant manner?
A common question is how to make cricket more popular in the U.S. as this is believed to help the sport’s popularity worldwide. There are a couple of problems with this idea:
- While the 1994 football (or soccer, as the Americans still call it) World Cup in the U.S. indeed raised the popularity of the sport there but it’s still not nearly as popular as the U.S. other preferred sports.
- There are several very popular sports in the U.S. like baseball and American football, and while the fact that they are popular there has helped their worldwide popularity, they are still very far behind football/soccer.
So, while making cricket more popular in the U.S. is certainly a great idea, it’s a little naïve to hope that this will singlehandedly skyrocket the sport’s worldwide popularity.
What about women’s cricket?
The popularity of women’s cricket compared to men’s cricket is similar in a lot of aspects to other women’s sports compared to their men’s counterparts – it’s interesting to many but it’s not as popular as the men’s sports yet. However, with the noise that was raised around the women’s football 2019 World Cup and the pay gap for female footballers earlier this year, maybe this is a direction that women’s cricket can explore?
Bringing politics into sports is usually not what the fans want but it did raise the attention toward the female football teams, especially in the U.S. Maybe several key events on U.S. soil plus the right female-empowering message around them can have a significant effect on women’s cricket?
What realistic expectations can we have about cricket’s worldwide popularity going forward?
There are many things that can be done better when it comes to international cricket. There are many valid criticisms that the ICC should address. Still, it’s reasonable to assume that even if everything is done better in the foreseeable future, cricket will probably never surpass football as the most popular sport in the world. Maybe a complete restructuring and rebranding of the sport can shake things up significantly but that’s unlikely to happen.
