USA catching cricket fever!

Imagine a national daily of Bangladesh publishing a special report to explain the game of cricket. With a ‘cricket expert’ at every home in the country, it would only produce surprise or annoyance among the readers.

Social media has helped expedite the cricket knowledge of the audience, making information available for them as now everybody who is interested knows enough about every team and tournament, let alone the game.

However, things are not the same in USA, a country dominated by baseball, basketball, and American football. Thus, the sports editors and sports reporters of the world-famous New York Times had the major responsibility of explaining the basics of cricket to their readers.

With the T20 World Cup with 20 teams being held in USA, the need for cricket to get some space on the paper has become essential, despite being one of the less popular sports.

Thus, with the World Cup in mind, the New York Times published several illustrated reports on cricket on May 31, the day before the tournament began.

They also published a box story, titled ‘A (Very) Quick Guide to Understanding Cricket ‘, to explain cricket to the readers. The article explained the similarity between cricket and baseball, and cited the famous book ‘Beyond a Boundary’ by CLR James, including – ‘There will be theatre, ballet, opera and dance.’

This is not the end as the eminent newspaper even replaced the torch of the iconic Statue of Liberty with a cricket bat.

The huge craze of the subcontinent expatriates in this fight between bat and ball, Americans are also trying to understand the game with curiosity.

A policeman on duty at the Bangladesh-India warm-up match on June 1 at Nassau County Ground in New York was repeatedly asking a Bangladeshi photographer, ‘How many wickets can fall in one over? How many runs could be on the scoreboard?’

On the way back to New York from Long Island after the India-Bangladesh warm-up match, the photographer also met an American named Kevin in the metro.

Kevin doesn’t know much about cricket like most Americans as his favourite sports are squash and American football. Despite that, he asked an important question, ‘What is the condition of your team? Looking good?’

After listening to the details of Bangladesh’s recent poor performances, Kevin smiled and said, ‘Don’t worry, that can happen in the game.’