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Originally Posted by battye
I agree with that to an extent. I think it is 4 day cricket which cannot. Twenty20 cricket has a high degree of excitement to it... perhaps more sixes in an innings than home runs in baseball (although I don't know for sure, I don't watch baseball).
If Twenty20 was to take off in a market, say the USA, then a supporter base will be built around it. Of these people, you will get some who find a deep interest in the game, and these are the people who will continue to support it once more first class cricket is played.
Suppose a series of Twenty20 games were played in the USA, between them and Canada. There should be a bit of a rivalry there.
5 matches, each game to a capacity crowd. Say 90,000.
That's 450,000 over 5 matches. If only 20% took an interest, that is 90,000 people.
Not a lot when you look at cricket mad countries like India, with over a billion people. But for a country like the USA, you have to start somewhere, and 90,000 isn't a bad start. Especially if that is 90,000 American-born people, not expats who follow the game.
Twenty20 does have the potential to globalize the game.
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This is all wishful thinking my friend and next to impossible to implement even in next 25 years.
Reason 1:
The Americans must change their culture which is next to impossible. There is no sense of nationality here. The NBA champions are recognized as world champs, they call World series for baseball championship, for Football they call super bowl champs as world champs. Even for formula 1 they have a thing called NASCAR. There is no need of rivalry between two nations for these folks. Their thought process is centered here and care less about the World. Just see how Football is having a hard time with mighty sponsors backing it even.
Reason 2:
Money. How many Cricket coaches (national, county, regional) gets paid 2Mill a year? There are several College Football (American football) and college basketball coaches gets paid over 3 mill a year. Imagine these are coaches of ameture teams. In professional ranks 10 mill a year is what a good coach gets. How do you think the multimill industry will compete with multibill industries? That is all cut-throat business for getting audiences to watch. Any prominent professional can buy the whole ICC if they want and make it private. ICC is that much helpless when competing against other sports in US.
There are several other reasons but just the above two can be enough to stop ICCs madness of trying to globalize this sport (penetrate US market).