The History of Cricket in America: The Sport's Important Transatlantic Roots

As the Men's T20 World Cup, hosted by the USA and West Indies, kicks off on Sunday morning (1:30 BST), here BBC Sport looks back at the storied history of cricket in the US.

A question that has vexed many a pub quiz team over the years is: “What two countries played against each other in the first international cricket match?”

If you've been caught up in it, you'll probably recall that England and Australia were not the two countries that played the first Test matches, including the inaugural one at the Oval in 1882.

The match, won by Australia, led to the now famous “obituary” of English cricket in The Sporting Times and the birth of the Ashes.

By that time, the sport's roots in the United States, where the first international competition was held, had been wiped out by the Civil War.

On September 24, 1844, in the middle of Manhattan, near First Avenue and East 31st Street, the United States and Canada faced off in what many consider to be sport's first international competition, predating the America's Cup yacht by nearly seven years.

The contest was scheduled for two days but was extended to three days due to rain.

The opening night match drew 5,000 fans to the St. George Club, and an estimated $100,000 (about $4.2 million in today's money) was bet on the outcome during the match.

The Canadians, somewhat exhausted and in tatters from a journey that had taken them up the St. Lawrence River, across Lake Ontario by boat and then on to a train to New York, batted first against an American attack made up entirely of Yorkshire-born Sam Wright and Harry Groom, scoring 82 points.

Canada's star was David Winkworth, who scored 12 with the bat and then delivered some thunderous round-arm blows himself to take four wickets as the USA were dismissed for 64.

Winkworth again top-scored with 14 points, and Canada added another 63 points to put the Americans in a commanding 82-point victory.

The run chase started well, with opening pairing James Turner and John Syme putting on 25 for no runs each, but then the first international batting collapse occurred, with George Sharp surviving the next six wickets to score just 11. The USA were not helped by the mysterious absence of third man George Wheatcroft.

He appeared on the ground 20 minutes after the last wicket fell and got into a heated argument with the Canadians over whether the game should be restarted so that he could bat. Canada stood firm; they were winning by 23 runs.

The match marked the beginning of a turbulent period of intense back-and-forth action between the two teams.

The following year, the teams met again, home and away, with Canada winning both games, but then a match was played in Harlem in 1846, and the atmosphere between the teams was so bad that the game was not played again for the next seven years.

Perhaps part of the reason was David Winkworth, who played for Canada in the first three games before moving to Detroit and playing for the United States in the 1846 game.

Though these matches and the players who played in them are now forgotten by time, they represent a turning point of sorts, a chance for the sport of cricket to take root in America just as the country was beginning to modernize.

The game was introduced by the British and was mentioned in the journal of statesman and planter William Byrd III in 1704.

The version known as “The Wicket” was so widespread that the diary of Valley Forge soldier George Ewing records that George Washington participated in at least one game.

Cricket vied with baseball for popularity, but Professor Tim Lockley, a social historian of the American South at the University of Warwick, told The Guardian: “Cricket was by far the biggest sport of the period. And just as it was reaching its peak in popularity, the Civil War began in 1861. Cricket became a casualty of that war.”

The door has been closed on cricket, at least as a mainstream sport.

After the Union victory in 1865, a handful of upscale sporting clubs around New York and Philadelphia stuck with the sport for a while.

University cricket was as thriving as it was in British public schools.

The Philadelphia club toured England in 1897, playing against the MCC, Oxford and Cambridge universities and most of the county teams, and their powerful all-rounder, Bert King, made waves by almost singlehandedly beating a full-line Sussex side.

The team returned twice more, in 1903 when King led the team to victories over Lancashire and Surrey, and in 1908 when he topped the country's bowling averages.

As international cricket began to coalesce around the Imperial Cricket Conference, formed in 1909 by Great Britain, Australia and South Africa, America was pushed aside.

The geography of cricket became the geography of empire: the Indian subcontinent, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, the West Indies and South Africa all shared their dubious colonial roots. As a result, their participation in international cricket and their subsequent first victories over “mother” England were significant.

It was this diaspora that gave the game a foothold in America.

Dwight Eisenhower watched a match in Karachi, and Donald Trump tried and failed to pronounce Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli's names correctly during his visit to India.

Two Los Angeles clubs enjoyed some fame: the Hollywood Cricket Club, whose players included Boris Karloff, who played Frankenstein's monster in the film, and the Compton Cricket Club, which used cricket to combat gang violence.

Perhaps the most significant contribution came online from Simon King of the University of Minnesota, who in 1993 launched a prototypical website he called Cricinfo, ostensibly to test the potential of a new medium called the World Wide Web.

With contributions from cricket-enthusiastic students and researchers from around the world, the site that is now ESPNCricinfo has grown to be one of the first and most comprehensive online resources on any sport.

Professional T20 cricket, launched in 2003 as the brainchild of the England and Wales Cricket Board, is an accelerated format that 21st century culture demanded and embraced.

The Indian Premier League is the ultimate version of this format, with a lineup packed with globe-trotting players and a sprinkling of Bollywood stars, and its 74 matches are valued at £10.5m, making it third in value per game behind the NFL and the Premier League.

It's this combination of format and profitability that America cannot afford to ignore.

Cricket has been searching for a turning point ever since the US joined the ICC as an associate member in 1965, but its history has been one of mismanagement and maladministration. In local terms, it was all a bit petty.

Cricket and soccer, while each hugely influential in other parts of the world, have struggled to make inroads in America.

The United States is large enough and populous enough to sustain an internalized culture, at least when it comes to its most beloved sports: basketball, baseball, and American football.

In America, cricket thrives unlike anywhere else in the world. Cricket (and soccer), at least for now, demands that America accept that it cannot rule them all or win them all, and that is hard for the less passionate to accept.

2023 has seen the most intensive effort yet towards a restart with the establishment of Major League Cricket, a franchise tournament based on the IPL model that will see stadiums built in six cities, including Los Angeles, New York and Washington.

The company has some big-name investors with Indian-American roots, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe executive Shantanu Narayen.

The inaugural season featured some big-name white-ball players such as England's 50-over World Cup winner Jason Roy, West Indies big hitters Sunil Narine and Andre Russell and Australia's rising star Jake Fraser-McGurk, as well as IPL stars Nicholas Pooran, Glenn Maxwell, Trent Boult and Kagiso Rabada.

The MLC will begin its second season just four days after the Men's T20 World Cup final.

The World Cup will pit the United States and Canada against powerhouses, with the tournament opening match set for June 1 at Grand Prairie Stadium in Dallas, in a nod to the sport's origin story.

Florida and New York, along with Texas, will host matches between the five teams competing in Group A, including the biggest one yet between India and Pakistan on June 9 in New York.

The fixture will attract worldwide attention and will be played in a temporary stadium with a capacity of 34,000, larger than any other English test venue apart from Old Trafford.

These figures continue to fascinate all those on the other side of the Atlantic who believe the sport has a real and lucrative future. After all, like cricket itself, it is a numbers game, and America has always been keen on very big numbers.