History of cricket in the USA: The empire’s favourite sport was once in its biggest colony

The late Robin Williams, the star of Mrs. Doubtfire and Jumanji, was a renowned entertainer with a sharp sense of wit about him. There was one off the cuff remark he made that caught my eye: “cricket is basically baseball on Valium.”

You don’t need to know Valium or its side-effects to understand that it was no compliment to the sport.

In fact, it is how most Americans see cricket — as an archaic distant cousin of its beloved all-American sport — baseball.

( READ: Making (Cricket in) America Great Again, Part 1)

They see cricket as an aberration of bat to ball sports, one that is stuck in time in gentlemanly whites, played by the same haggard individuals who age, but age slowly just as the game does age its way across five days with no end in sight. For the American eye, that stereotypes all cricket to the test cricket of the early 20th century, they perceive the sport to be lacking the panache, the pyrotechnics and the pulsating action of the NBA, the NFL and to an extent the MLB.

The game is steeped in British antiquity of breaking for tea and yet one that is very confusing to the untrained eye to be learned as you watch along. Ergo, it has been an exercise in futility to get more Americans into the sport and see the USA excel from the abyss of Associates status to the elite upper echelons of the sport.