The hottest ticket this past Sunday in the London metropolitan region was a game of baseball, while the hottest ticket in the New York City metropolitan region was a game of cricket!
Over 100,000 fans filled London Stadium to see a Saturday and Sunday Major League Baseball series between rivals New York Mets and the league leading Philadelphia Phillies and a near 50,000 flocked to Nassau County Cricket Stadium to see the Netherlands take on South Africa and India take on Pakistan in the 2024 Twenty20 World Cup.
Phillies’ world famous mascot Phillie Phanatic was making its way to Buckingham Palace while criketers like America’s Ali Khan were given photo shoots on top of the Empire State Building.
Baseball imagery dominated the scenery of Trafalgar Square, while cricket imagery dominated Times’ Square.
For one weekend, cricket’s home town and baseball’s home town were cheering on the other sport, at the same time their most cherished teams were playing major games and matches.
When the Mets and Phillies were playing on Sunday, the Mets’ Citi Field was hosting a watch party in the nearby Queens Borough for Indian and Pakistani fans who could not buy tickets for their match. This was all during a weekend that also featured the only home series for two seasons between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers (who came from nearby Brooklyn Borough) at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx Borough, two historic rivals and present-day juggernauts of the sport with the most popular players.
Meanwhile, on the same weekend that Major League Baseball came to London, South London’s Surrey were hosting the Sussex Sharks in the Vitality T20 series on Friday, followed by the renewal of the England & Wales national team versus Australia rivalry on Saturday from Barbados at the T20 World Cup, and capping off with Sunday’s North London side Middlesex traveling to play the Kent Spitfires. Many of these games and matches were happening at the same time as the local teams’ and fans still showed up to watch the “foreign” related sport.
Suffice to say, it was a weekend that featured very important games and matches for the favorite teams of New York and London in the bat-and-ball sports.
Yet, high viewership and attendance made all teams have a successful weekend in the box office and showed the new upward trend of both sports, especially in the traditional homelands of the other.
Baseball’s version of the World Cup came last year at the 2023 World Baseball Classic which saw the first appearance of Great Britain and the Australians earn their historical best result. And this experience set the stage for America to embrace a new bat-and-ball sport as well.
Australia has long been a cricket hot bed, but its baseball had also been elite since the 1980s. With cricket being Australia’s summer sport, and the convention always detailing that a nation could only have one of the related bat-and-ball sports popular and only be good at one, Australia soon dismissed this reality. Baseball has become a secondary bat-and-ball sport during Australian summers featuring one of the best professional leagues during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter, the Australian Baseball League, and a national team that is consistently competitive with the world’s best.
Furthermore, Australia and New Zealand have become breeding grounds of elite softball play, a popular recreational sport in the two nations that derives from baseball. In fact, while New Zealand have the most men’s World Cup titles at 7, Australia are coming off of winning their second World Cup in 2022. As for their women’s sides, both nations are one of only four nations to have won the World Cup dominated by the USA and Japan.
Meanwhile, Australia made history in the 2023 World Baseball Classic after upsetting South Korea to finish 3-1 in Group B and advance to the Quarterfinals for the first time!
So, in the span of two years, Australia had become world champions and quarterfinalist in two “American” bat-and-ball sports: softball and baseball.
Yet, 2022 and 2023 were not only historic back to back years for softball and baseball in Australia, but it also became the most successful in Australian cricket.
Australian men’s national teams reached historic firsts winning their record 6th (ODI) Cricket World Cup and 1st Test World Championship.
Meanwhile, the women cricketers were also coming off of historic results from winning their record 7th ODI World Cup in 2022, and their record 8th T20 World Cup in 2023.
Thus, record numbers flocked to the TVs and stadiums to watch the bat-and-ball games dominated by Australia the last few years as the land Down Under continued to prove the old convention wrong, as even Australian women’s baseball has reached a World Cup Final.
This trend was seen as normal in Australia for most nations experience up-ticks in a sport their national team excels at, but what was even more remarkable were similar trends across the world.
Great Britain was a great example of this where their national baseball team finally qualified for the World Baseball Classic. It was the first time since the 1930s that the North American game was making in-roads into the nation that brought us cricket and other similar sports, including a derivative of the North American game called British or Welsh Baseball. Great Britain opened up with the defending World Champions USA in Phoenix, Arizona and surprised the large crowd by scoring first and keeping close throughout the whole game. Their crowning of the king home run celebration became a sensation in British schools, and leading sports media including the BBC were quick to feature the success of Great Britain on the top stories, especially after they upset a very good Colombia side.
The British have loved cricket for over 500 years, but their love for baseball saw record crowds, professional leagues, and immense talent in the late 1890s to the first decade of the 1900s, and in the 1930s. Meanwhile, crowds across Merseyside, England, and Wales were also quick to watch their own form of baseball during this time, with the England versus Wales national team games often getting in the tens of thousands in support. Welsh baseball has lost a lot of its luster since the 1980s, but the North American version and cricket are seeing tremendous growth as of recent.
Similar to the British story has been the rise of American and Canadian cricket. The USA and Canada used to be cricket hotbeds as part of British America since the 1600s.
The two nations even played in the first official international in 1844, but the sport began to lose its popularity after the Civil War introduced baseball to the two nations.
Since this pivotal moment, cricket was nearly completely lost in the USA and relegated to only five official fields nearly a decade ago for the whole nation, while only the Canadian elite and recent South Asian immigrants kept cricket alive there.
Nevertheless, the past three decades for Canada and USA has seen a resurgence in cricket.
Canada’s resurgence was largely due to the aforementioned influx of the South Asian immigrants plus their Caribbean counterparts that contributed to the success of the ODI National Team through three consecutive World Cup qualifications in 2003, 2007, and 2011. Canada earned two wins during these world cups with a win over Bangladesh in 2003 and a win over Kenya in 2011!
Nevertheless, Canada went through a dry-spell until their eventual creation of their first professional league, a franchise T20 league called Global T20, in 2018. Finally, Canada was able to reach a World Cup again in 2024, for the Twenty20 format, their first ever. Canada so far is 1-1, having just won their first T20 World Cup game ever over Ireland. They play Pakistan on 11 June so we may see a historic T20 World Cup second win too.
The USA elite did not carry cricket after the early 1900s unlike in Canada so nearly everyone had switched over to baseball leaving cricket to have little to no existence among American-born populations.
The game was kept alive mainly by immigrants such as the Caribbean diaspora in the Los Angeles and Miami areas, and South Asian communities in North Carolina, Texas, and both communities around New York City.
But, South Asians have begun to immigrate at higher rates as well attend universities and work in various industries across the USA even more since the 2000s, leading to university cricket, and an eventual campaign to grow professional and national team cricket.
The first attempt was in 2004 with Pro Cricket in a format similar to Twenty20, and a renewal of official national team play in ODI. These attempts were not as successful. But, cricket retained a steady growth.
American companies like ESPN had invested early into the cricket phase seeing the rise of immigration from South Asia as well as the creation of the newest form of cricket: Twenty20. Thus, Cricinfo was bought by ESPN to become ESPN Cricinfo, a leading cricket news site globally.
American companies and influence were key into inspiring Twenty20 franchise cricket with leading leagues modeling the way they named their teams, their salary-cap rules, and other key factors after MLB teams and rules. Hence, why the most popular IPL team features a team with the same name as the former Cleveland Guardians name, the Mumbai Indians.
Furthermore, the Twenty20 game was directly modeled on the average 3 hour time-length of a Major League Baseball game, because cricket saw they needed a shorter version to gain and retain popularity for the newer generations and saw how baseball still received high marks in total attendances across many nations.
This American presence was not new to cricket as it had been high for a while since the 1980s due to cricket teams hiring and using baseball fielding strategists’ plans to elevate cricket’s level of play. Many cricketers in places like Australia and New Zealand also began to play both sports to increase hitting, throwing, and fielding motor skills. But, the American presence now seemed to be reverberating back to America too. When Americans logged onto ESPN or their streaming services, they could find a dedicated cricket news site and top matches that were quite entertaining.
The Caribbean Premier League used this momentum by playing select games in a newly built cricket stadium for a largely Caribbean suburb of Miami in 2016, at the time the only cricket stadium with stands in the USA.
The influx of immigration gave rise to two types of cricketers seen on the national team today: native-born Americans who are children of parents from cricket loving nations and immigrants who moved to America when they were young and desired to continue playing their favorite sport in their new country.
This growth saw numbers jump from about 30,000 avid cricket players and fans in 2006 in the States to a 2013 statistic that counted 200,000. Now, the number is in the millions and growing with more than 200,000 competitive players and over 400 leagues.
High school and youth leagues have began forming.
The USA revamped its national team with play in ODI in 2017, and began national team Twenty20 play in 2019. Its youth national setup is quite impressive and has seen players transition between the youth and senior setups.
Minor League Cricket (MiLC) began semi-professional T20 cricket in 2021, followed by 2023’s inaugural fully professional Major League Cricket (MLC).
During this time period, cricket has grown into a major minor sport in the USA and Canada with cricket-dedicated television channels, growing access to leading cricket competitions through online streaming, and an expansion into the women’s game.
But, what was so unique about cricket’s rise in North America has been the 2023 season, once again dispelling previous conventions.
The 2023 World Baseball Classic had record high attendances and viewership numbers across the whole world, especially the USA. This helped spur Major League Baseball, and many other leagues around the world and domestically including minor leagues across the USA and Canada improving attendances. Teams from Québec City to Charlotte to Los Angeles had very successful attendances.
Yet, the summer of 2023 doubled as a record number of cricket viewership, attendance, and revenue too, with Major League Cricket and Global T20 raising the standard across North America.
Cricket ovals have began being built across the states and provinces, while the USA was gaining the brand new stadiums in major metropolitan areas like Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, plus the Research Triangle in North Carolina. Meanwhile, cricket stadiums are planned for to be built in more states, especially a brand-new one scheduled for a Los Angeles suburb in Irvine where the USA successfully petitioned for the inclusion of baseball and Twenty20 cricket into the 2028 Olympics.
And, the 2024 Twenty20 Cricket World Cup has only added to this popularity so far with matches ranging anywhere from the high 5,000s to 30,000+ in attendance. The tournament is far from over, and still has five more days left in the USA. What has really helped has been the USA’s success too, being 2-0 thus far after an unbelievable comeback over Canada and a huge upset win over Pakistan which gained national prominence across mainstream media.
Thus, record attendances and high viewership numbers have met both sports across the world.
But, these nations are not the only ones seeing an up-growth in two bat-and-ball games.
Japan is seeing a resurgence in baseball popularity coming off of their World Baseball Classic high, all while cricket is making huge in-roads there.
South Asia has seen the creation of multiple professional baseball concepts as baseball continues to be a popular sport in viewership across all the nations there, with minor participatory success in Pakistan. Some reports have even suggested that India’s third favorite sport to watch is baseball, which seems awfully high and probably not true. Nevertheless, we do know India has baseball fans that exceed 14 million, a population higher than other leading baseball nations like the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Thus, one can see that the South Asian nations like India could really become good baseball nations even if they keep just 1% of their nation interested.
And, across the Chinese speaking world, both sports are gaining more popularity such as in Taiwan and Mainland China with baseball, and in Hong Kong with cricket.
This reality goes against the classic convention of a cricket eat baseball or baseball eat cricket world. No longer are the two necessarily taking fans away from each other, rather it appears that the two sports are creating fans for each other and greater respect.
This can be seen in the growth of both brands across the various homelands of the sport.
But, it can also be seen in the growth of other bat-and-ball sports across the world.
Recently, Finland’s national summer sport called Pesäpallo or Finnish Baseball, a derivative of the North American version, has grown across many leading baseball and other bat-and-ball nations.
For example, you will often notice names like Australia, Bangladesh, and India on the list of top performing nations at the World Cup, and Switzerland who has its own related traditional sport called hornussen.
Finnish baseball may not rival cricket’s popularity in Bangladesh yet, but it is now known by some sporting circles as a top sport for Bangladesh whose rise in the sport has been quite fast, achieving a runners-up medal at the World Cup a year after playing the sport for the first time.
And, while the USA is not as successful yet in the sport, Finnish baseball has become quite popular to watch videos of and has seen a rise in recognition such as in ESPN’s daily Top 10 plays and through MLB who has helped promote the sport.
Therefore, in a world dominated by so many other sports from the various footballs to basketball, the various hockeys, and plenty more, the bat-and-ball sports have a unique opportunity to drive opportunity and create a more united world.
A Plan for the Future:
The bat-and-ball sports or “safe haven” sports have a special opportunity to improve the quality of each others’ sports and provide greater opportunity for each others’ players.
Similar to auto-racing where many enthusiasts and competitors watch, participate in, and respect each circuit and major races with a Triple Crown including Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix, Indy Car’s Indianapolis 500, and endurance racing’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, plus a special recognition of NASCAR’s Daytona 500 for stock-car racing, the bat-and-ball sports can regain prominence through diplomacy that will be a net benefit for all involved.
First, both sports should be more respectful and talk highly of each other to increase awareness of the sports.
The reasons the leading personalities, leagues, and federations should engage in this is because both sports desire more high level leagues and national teams to increase competitiveness around the globe and using each other networks can help create demand so that the supply can be high enough quality.
Baseball’s World Baseball Classic is highly competitive with 20 participants and many high quality teams that barely missed qualification. For example, only Nicaragua and the People’s Republic of China failed to win a game in their group, but Nicaragua was simply placed into a very difficult group and the nation features high level baseball, while the People’s Republic of China played competitively in two games with an extremely young team plagued by inexperience due to Mainland China’s COVID policies. Many national teams on the Mainland suffered due to a lack of consistent competition for multiple years.
Meanwhile, the 2024 Twenty20 Cricket World Cup has seen a significant upgrade in competition thus far. In the past, the elite nations of cricket almost never lost to the “associates”, and there was often vast drop offs in competitiveness in qualifiers between various associate nations themselves. However, the qualification process and the World Cup thus far has seen impressive play by all nations.
And, in both world championships, a lot of this excitement has been facilitated by nations that have featured in both competitions such as Australia, the USA, Canada, Great Britain (England & Wales, Scotland, and Ireland national teams for the T20 WC), the Netherlands, and the West Indies (Sint Maartin participates as part of the Netherlands in WBC and West Indies in T20 WC).
Therefore, both sports would benefit if they can tap into regions where each other are not present. Baseball desperately wants to become more popular in the South Asian, Middle Eastern, and African markets, while cricket desires the Latin American, East Asian, and North American markets baseball dominates. Both also want to regain previous strongholds in Southeast Asia like the Philippines for baseball and cricket for Indonesia.
Obviously, cricket loving nations like India and Pakistan will retain cricket as their popular sport, while baseball loving nations like Japan and the Mexico will focus on baseball, but imagine if all these nations began to feature in both world championships and their qualifications?
Already, we have seen the benefits in subsequent years for both sports because of the inclusion of nations that largely focus on the other sport.
The reasons the fans should embrace this approach is because the sports are quite similar and they are directly related.
Baseball is like defensive cricket and cricket is like offensive baseball, and both are so stat heavy that they complement each other. Additionally, due to the sports retaining their highest level of play often in different time zones, fans of both sports will be able to see a sport they appreciate at different times in the day. This will help fans of both sports learn new geography, terms, and a whole new culture, benefitting their cultural prowres.
The reasons coaches and players should desire this collaboration is because both sports often improve each other. Both sports use similar strategies, similar techniques, similar equipment and technology, and other key materials.
And, if there is more demand for these materials, more knowledge of these strategies and techniques, than there will be more available for better development and knowledge of the sports.
For example, geographic restrictions often limit both sports inclusion into competitions like the Olympics, and raise costs of equipment.
But the prices of bats, helmets, batting cages, pitching and bowling machines, injury recovery, and specialized training can all be lowered with increases in demand.
Competitions like the Olympics and television contracts across the world will likely increase players’ rewards and statuses if they can participate and feature on screens across the world.
A great example of this is how Australia promoted softball/baseball inclusion into the Olympics for 1956 and the USA has now promoted cricket successfully into the Olympics for 2028.
Most importantly, players can benefit by playing both sports and other similar sports to find their best opportunities. Many leading athletes in Australia, and now North America, the Netherlands, and the Caribbean where both sports are popular have benefitted from being able to try each sport to see which one they enjoyed more and which one they were better at.
There are probably many extremely talented Indian cricketers and Japanese baseball players that have the discipline and skillsets to transition to the other sport to become professionals and national heroes, but a lack of collaboration has relegated these athletes to less opportunities to play only one sport.
The players that do not wish to transition will also benefit from the expansion of professional opportunities in other nations should this family of sports continue to grow together and the expansion in revenue for their domestic competitions.
One of the reasons we see for exploding soccer contracts is due to the rising growth of the sport in non-traditional, but highly populous and wealthy nations, like the USA, Japan, People’s Republic of China, India, Australia, and so forth. None of these nations feature soccer as their major sport, but the growth of the sport has succeeded in making it more well-viewed and has raised revenues. Likewise, if cricket and baseball work together, they can gain enough viewers in each other’s primary nations to rise revenues across the board.
And lastly, the reasons nations and their diplomatic networks should advocate for the extension of these sports around the world is because it both gives them more influence and also more opportunities for their nations to be united.
For example, the people that like cricket in the USA and Canada which are very large and successful economies and are part of very important military alliances are immediately more knowledgeable of South Asian companies, culture, and have a greater liking for these nations. So, not only does your nation benefit from a sport you excel at becoming more popular somewhere else from a consumption basis, but if one of these fans becomes prominent in society, you may even benefit from a geo-strategic perspective.
A good example of this is how the sports of table-tennis and basketball have brought Mainland China and the USA much closer together opening up the two largest economies to bilateral trade.
Prior to this, Japan and the USA were the two largest economies and the two shared a love for many sports, most notably baseball.
These experiences have helped grow MLB and other baseball events, as well as the NBA and other basketball events, making America a more desirable place in many leaders’ eyes.
Likewise, as India’s economy continues to grow, both Indian sports and American sports would greatly benefit from using each other’s networks to grow in each other’s nations.
IPL Cricket may get higher domestic viewership than the MLB because India is much larger than the USA and Canada, but the USA and Canada receive higher ad revenue per person because the North American audience has much more wealth.
Nations also greatly benefit domestically from an increased access to sports because when their national teams do well, the country feels better about themselves and grows more united.
Additionally, not every city, state, province, or other subdivision can be successful in certain popular sports or even possess a team. But, if there are more sports played in a nation, these subdivisions can likely gain an opportunity to excel in something new. This helps drive down any tensions, separatism, or other issues as greater success and access to opportunities creates more happiness and content.
So, it would be advantageous for bat-and-ball nations to embrace other bat-and-ball sports so they can give their people more opportunities, raise the level of play of their favorite sport, and give their nations more influence.
Conclusion:
The full results of the 2024 Twenty20 World Cup are yet to be in as it ends on June 29th, but the last two years of cricket and baseball expansion has been highly successful and lucrative for both sports.
It has demonstrated that the more baseball can lead to more cricket and vice versa in nations dispelling the myth that as one sport grows, the other diminishes.
The truth is that both sports suffer from the same criticism and are loved for the same reasons so they should utilize each other to grow their marketing abilities against other quicker and faster sports.
KTH 