America, Cricket’s Next Frontier

Tomorrow, a cricket match will take place in a pop-up stadium on Long Island with turf flown in from Australia. From the venue’s north stand, you can just about discern the tallest skyscrapers and bridges of New York City. At least 30,000 spectators, most of them wearing the light-blue shirt of India, will pack the bleachers. What happens next—a match in the T20 Cricket World Cup between India and the U.S.A.—will be viewed by a huge audience on digital and TV platforms. Games of the 2023 Major League Baseball World Series were watched, on average, by 9.1 million. The 2024 Super Bowl drew 123.7 million viewers in the United States—the largest such audience ever. The worldwide viewership for India versus U.S.A. will almost certainly surpass that of the Super Bowl, quite possibly by tens of millions of viewers.