Packed stadiums. Raucous crowds. Hooting vuvuzelas. The stage is ready for cricket’s greatest carnival, which kicks off in India on October 5 with 10 nations competing for the World Cup over six weeks.
On the floor, the numbers recommend a worldwide occasion: With over one billion fans, cricket is among the many world’s hottest sports activities. However nearly 5 centuries after the earliest recorded reference to cricket in southeast England, the game’s market largely stays restricted to a handful of nations, led by India.
The game unfold with the British Empire, with the primary worldwide matches performed within the second half of the nineteenth century. But, at the same time as cricket has developed over time with changes in rules and the introduction of latest codecs and competitions, it has struggled to broaden its attain past Commonwealth international locations.
India, Australia and England dominate as cricketing powerhouses on the sector whereas additionally holding important positions of energy off the sector within the governance constructions of the game. Other than the ‘Massive Three’, different main cricketing nations embrace Pakistan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Bangladesh and Caribbean international locations that play collectively because the West Indies.
And that’s about it.
Soccer’s governing physique FIFA boasts greater than 200 member nations. The Worldwide Cricket Council (ICC), against this, has solely 12 full members, with dozens of different nations as affiliate members.
The 50-over World Cup, for lengthy cricket’s marquee occasion, has swung between accommodating extra groups – a document 16 participated within the 2007 version – and limiting participation to a choose band of top-performing nations, as would be the case this time round.
The following version, in 2027, will see 14 groups battle it out, however that’s nonetheless a a lot smaller quantity than the 32 nations which have competed within the soccer World Cup since 1998. In truth, 48 will characteristic within the subsequent soccer World Cup in 2026.
So, can the World Cup fireplace up curiosity in cricket past international locations that already love the game? Or are shorter codecs, like 20-overs-a-side competitions – generally known as Twenty20 (T20) cricket – the autos that may propel assist all over the world? Does cricket actually have a international future?
The brief reply: Cricket does have scope to develop, however it’s unlikely to change into a worldwide phenomenon anytime quickly. And greater than the 50-over World Cup, it’s the three-hour spectacle of T20 cricket that’s the approach ahead, say consultants, particularly with the emergence of franchise leagues in new markets corresponding to america. Girls’s cricket can even assist enhance the game’s international footprint, whereas a potential return to the Olympic Video games may function a lift.
Why has cricket not change into international but?
In contrast to soccer, enjoying cricket includes excessive expenditure – be it shopping for the mandatory gear, organising stadiums or sustaining pitches.
“Cricket has a comparatively excessive barrier to entry in comparison with most sports activities, merely because of the degree of apparatus required to play even a leisure recreation,” mentioned Matt Curler, assistant editor on the ESPNCricinfo web site. “For my part, that’s the principal cause that soccer has lengthy been a worldwide sport: All you want is a ball and any small house.”
However there are different causes, too, behind cricket’s failure – by and enormous – to broaden past its conventional markets, consider some consultants.
One key issue? The game’s roots.
Jamie Alter, a cricket analyst and journalist, mentioned that cricket’s foundations in colonialism imply the very cloth of the game is tied to Commonwealth international locations. “The sport is simply too intrinsic to the cultures of most of those international locations, and regardless of the efforts of the ICC to broaden cricket throughout the globe, it stays a fairly restricted sport because it depends on too few international locations to correctly thrive and broaden,” Alter mentioned.
Historically cricket-loving nations like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh alone represent a market of practically two billion folks.
“Much more insular is the power of cricket from a industrial perspective,” he added, referring to the financial clout of India and developed cricket-playing international locations like England and Australia. That insularity can blunt any sense of urgency to broaden the game’s attain amongst directors.
Nonetheless, it isn’t as if the pool of countries that play cricket has remained completely stagnant.
Although there are information of the British enjoying cricket in Afghanistan within the nineteenth century, the game actually took off within the war-torn nation amongst refugees who performed in camps in Pakistan prior to now twenty years.
Then, in its first-ever 50-over World Cup in 2015, the Afghan aspect beat Scotland. In 2019, the nation acquired check standing – the top of the game – and shortly defeated two different check nations: Bangladesh and fellow greenhorn, Eire. Afghan gamers are actually regulars in T20 franchise leagues the world over.
However there’s little to recommend that the game’s bosses have plans in place to copy Afghanistan’s success. In truth, some consultants consider that directors are cautious of upstart groups upsetting main nations with massive markets, particularly in occasions just like the World Cup.
‘Rising very slowly’
Cricket World Cups have usually attracted criticism over their small pool of collaborating groups. The World Cups are poorly designed – too lengthy and with too few groups – mentioned Tim Wigmore, deputy cricket correspondent for The Each day Telegraph newspaper. The ten-team World Cup in India can have 48 matches spanning 46 days. The 2022 soccer World Cup in Qatar had 32 groups and but ran for lower than a month.
“Cricket has been extremely conservative within the variety of groups it has allowed in World Cups,” Wigmore, co-author of the ebook Crickonomics, mentioned.
And the explanations will not be completely harmless, in line with him.
In 2007, the 50-overs World Cup had 16 groups. However Eire defeated Pakistan and Bangladesh beat India, pushing the South Asian nations out of the competitors on the group stage. Wigmore believes the variety of collaborating nations was “perversely” decreased in subsequent tournaments “to make sure that sides from larger markets had extra video games”.
Like the boys’s recreation, the ladies’s World Cups additionally characteristic only a few groups. The primary version of the Girls’s World Cup featured seven groups in 1973, and the participation fluctuated over time, reaching the best depend of 11 in 1997. The most recent Girls’s World Cup in 2022 featured eight groups and the following version in 2025 can even have the identical depend.
“So permitting extra groups is lengthy overdue – although this yr’s ODI World Cup nonetheless solely has 10 groups and the quantity within the ladies’s World Cups is just rising very slowly,” Wigmore mentioned. ODIs – One Day Internationals – are 50-over-a-side matches between worldwide groups.
Georgie Heath, a cricket commentator and presenter, mentioned that the World Cups additionally must be marketed in the appropriate technique to appeal to new followers.
“A lot promoting appears to be focused at those that are already cricket followers and are going to observe or attend video games anyway. There must be extra deal with how they’ll herald new audiences, gamers and followers and what the game provides them,” Heath mentioned.
“Usually solely being on pay-to-view tv is a barrier to growth, too, and that is one thing that must be addressed in addition to a number of the extortionate costs usually charged for tickets.”
A chaotic ticketing system on the World Cup that’s about to start has pissed off followers. Ticket costs vary from 499 rupees ($6) to 40,000 rupees ($481) on BookMyShow, the official ticketing platform. Charges within the resale market are exorbitant, with the costliest ticket for the highly-anticipated India vs Pakistan match promoting for 25 million rupees ($300,545) on Viagogo, a multinational ticket change and ticket resale model.
In the meantime, questions over the very survival of the ODI format are mounting.
The long run: 20 or 50 overs?
In July, the Marylebone Cricket Membership (MCC) – the custodians of the sport’s legal guidelines – really helpful limiting the variety of ODI internationals following the 2027 World Cup. The suggestion comes at a time when the 50-over format is dropping its relevance: Longer, five-day check matches stay the precedence for conventional followers, whereas informal viewers have embraced a faster and glitzier 20-over-a-side format that has spawned a number of franchise leagues.
Cricketers themselves are much less satisfied that it’s time to bid farewell to ODIs.
A report in 2022 by the Federation of Worldwide Cricketers’ Affiliation, the worldwide physique that represents gamers, mentioned that 54 p.c of cricketers nonetheless take into account the ODI World Cup as the highest trophy to compete for, although the quantity had decreased considerably from 86 p.c of their 2018-19 survey.
“My view is that one-day cricket shall be performed much less and fewer on the worldwide degree, however that the World Cup will stay a pinnacle occasion that gamers aspire to be a part of,” Curler mentioned. “The overall subject for 50-over cricket is that bilateral worldwide cricket is more and more being squeezed by franchise leagues – and personal buyers clearly have restricted curiosity within the thought of 50-over leagues, seeing the pace of video games as a key element of short-form cricket’s enchantment.”
To Curler, the T20 World Cup – held each two years – is a “a lot clearer car for progress”. With subsequent yr’s T20 World Cup set to characteristic 20 groups, its greatest pool of contributors to date, Wigmore, the cricket author and creator, expects the match to be a giant catalyst for cricket’s progress.
Nevertheless it received’t be simple. Decrease-ranked groups are prone to wrestle to stay aggressive as they obtain a really restricted share of central broadcast income from the T20 World Cup, Curler identified, limiting the sources that they’ll funnel again into popularising the game.
“Staging the match each two years additionally dangers killing the golden goose: the shortage of World Cups in different sports activities helps add to their status,” he added.
Different analysts consider the longer term lies in T20 cricket – not a lot in worldwide matches, however in franchise leagues.
‘Constructing a profitable enterprise’
In 2018, ex-ICC CEO David Richardson mentioned that it was “fairly clear” that T20 cricket can be the format by which the governing physique may “globalise and develop the sport worldwide”.
Quick ahead to 2023, and the T20 format appears to be flourishing. There are home and franchise leagues happening in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Oceania and a few components of Europe.
The Indian Premier League (IPL), which has an estimated model worth of $8.4bn, has constructed its standing because the world’s prime T20 competitors since its inception in 2008. Profitable leagues have additionally began in Australia, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, England and Wales, Pakistan, the Caribbean and most not too long ago in america.
“T20 cricket has unfold the game, however for cricket to be a sustainable and international recreation, it’s going to be these leagues which might be beginning up in all places, like within the US or UAE,” mentioned Bharat Sundaresan, cricket author for the Cricbuzz web site. “Ultimately, we’ll attain a degree the place if there’s a window, new leagues may come up in different nations.
“And that’s personally how I see cricket rising much more in a worldwide sense,” Sundaresan mentioned.
In July, cricket broke into the world’s wealthiest market, the US, with the launch of Major League Cricket, with six groups competing within the T20 format. The MLC assembled a powerful group of buyers, with 4 of its six franchises owned by enterprise entities that additionally personal groups within the IPL.
The US – together with the West Indies – can also be scheduled to host the T20 World Cup subsequent yr, providing a possibility for the game and format to develop there.
“All these IPL franchise house owners, whether or not they have the most effective curiosity of the game in thoughts or not, the one factor they do know to do is to run a profitable enterprise,” Sundaresan mentioned.
“Their enterprise is so depending on their model being showcased for an extended interval through the yr fairly than simply for 2 months, which is why they’re shopping for out all of the groups all over the world. It’s simply going to result in there being extra leagues,” he added.
Sundaresan additionally tipped ladies’s cricket as enjoying a key position in enhancing the game’s international picture. The primary full-fledged five-team Girls’s Premier League (WPL) earlier this yr noticed a number of feminine cricketers witnessing the largest payday of their careers on the public sale.
In the meantime, the FairBreak Invitational T20 held its second version in Hong Kong this yr, that includes a number of the world’s finest feminine cricketers who took half within the six-team match.
“I feel ladies’s cricket will popularise cricket as a sport extra globally than what males’s cricket has been capable of do within the final 150 years,” Sundaresan mentioned.
He cited the gorgeous emergence of Thailand – a rustic with no recognized historical past within the sport – as a petri dish of expertise within the ladies’s recreation. They certified for his or her first international occasion in 2020 after they competed on the Girls’s T20 World Cup and the workforce has been ranked as excessive as tenth internationally.
Thai gamers have additionally grabbed consideration in franchise leagues. In 2020, opening batter Natthakan Chantham performed for the Trailblazers within the Girls’s T20 Problem competitors in India, changing into the primary Thai cricketer to play in an expert T20 franchise league. All-rounders Nattaya Boochatham and Sornnarin Tippoch, in addition to batter Naruemol Chaiwai, featured within the FairBreak Invitational T20 this yr.
“Out of the blue, it’s a free-for-all, proper?” Sundaresan mentioned. “Like, you could be a part of a nationwide workforce in a rustic which doesn’t have an ideal customary of cricket, however you could have a match to go to and play.”
An Olympic medal subsequent?
The T20 format can also be firing larger ambitions for cricket. The game’s authorities have bid for cricket to be included within the Los Angeles Olympic Video games in 2028, having final featured on the 1900 Video games in Paris.
The proposal: A five-team T20 competitors, for each women and men.
However will cricket as an Olympic sport assist broaden its international attain? Not everybody is certain.
“I’d like to see cricket performed on the Olympics for the second time particularly as this may then embrace ladies enjoying cricket, too,” Heath, the commentator and presenter, mentioned.
“My reservations right here lie in contemplating what number of international locations shall be included, what the qualification routes are, who performs, and the hazard that it simply turns into one other match of the identical international locations enjoying out as we at all times see.”
Different consultants agree that whereas Olympic involvement may give cricket extra international visibility, it’s unlikely to remodel its footprint in a single day.
“A small T20 match won’t be transformative in itself and would doubtless be performed by just a few groups within the first occasion,” Curler mentioned.
An Olympic stamp in itself wouldn’t imply that cricket has gone international, Curler mentioned. “There are a variety of comparatively area of interest sports activities on the Olympics already, that are a lot smaller than cricket by way of participation numbers or viewers.”
Certainly, some analysts ponder whether cricket even must aspire for a presence in each a part of the world.
“I like cricket and at all times will, however I don’t see the way it going to the Olympics goes to essentially promote the game,” Alter mentioned.
“Does cricket must be a worldwide sport? It’s profitable for over 150 years in its personal world.”