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A brief history of cricket in America, or how John Adams complained about the president By
Leon D'souza George Bernard Shaw described cricket as "a game played by 22 fools and watched by 22,000 fools." Robin Williams, the celebrated American comic, joked about cricket being much like "baseball played on Valium." His is one of the more complimentary American remarks on the sport. These remarks notwithstanding, cricket is a splendid game. And it was once a major sport in North America. In fact, if the history of modern cricket is dated from the 1780s, when the Laws of Cricket, which still govern the sport today, were first formalized in England, North America would have to be considered a major participant in the world cricket scene for two-thirds of the time that modern cricket has been around. The history of American cricket can be traced to the cricket clubs of the 1700s. Colonists in Georgia, Virginia and North and South Carolina played the game. Historic references to cricket include games in Georgia in 1737 and in Baltimore in 1754, the same year Benjamin Franklin brought a printed copy of cricket rules of play home to the Colonies, almost 100 years before the first book of baseball rules was published. Several of our Founding Fathers were known to be cricket aficionados. New World cricket historians point out that perhaps the most momentous reference to the game was made during the 1776 debate in Independence Hall, when John Adams argued against the chief executive of the United States of America being called "President." "Fire brigades and cricket clubs have presidents," he wrote. Eastern Canada launched its own cricket clubs soon after the American clubs appeared on the scene. Both American and Canadian clubs hunted for competitive cricket, as was the norm in those times. It was out of this friendly rivalry that international cricket was born. The world's first international tournament was played between Canada and the United States at St. George's Cricket Club in Manhattan on Sept. 24-25, 1844. The series flourished and then gradually died away. It has recently been revived. The USA vs. Canada cricket match is the oldest international sporting event in the modern world, predating even the Olympics by nearly 50 years. American cricket reached its peak of popularity in the late 1800s. Its golden era began to draw to a close in the early 1900s. By 1924, the game virtually disappeared from the American sporting landscape. The near total eclipse of cricket in the United States was due to developments in the British Empire. The British were not at all excited about American participation in world cricket. The Imperial Cricket Conference, which was formed to coordinate the worldwide development of the sport, specifically excluded countries from outside the British Empire from any role in the proceedings. Consequently, cricket in the United States remained a strictly amateur elite sport at the same time that England and Australia were developing a professional system that allowed full-time players to participate. By that time, baseball was gaining sway. In a few decades from then, cricket in America became a distant memory. A significant influx of immigrants from Commonwealth countries in recent times has led to a renewed interest in the game. The Merion Cricket Club, on Philadelphia's Main Line revived the game by re-introducing Spring and Fall "fixtures" in 1978. Today, there are about 250 cricket clubs active throughout the country with a pool of about 10,000 players. On The Web: Cricket in America: A short historical review http://www.haverford.edu/library/cricket/CCM002.HTM As American as Cricket http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/07/nixon.htm Modern Cricket: 1700- http://www.seattlecricket.com/history/histmod.htm
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