Major League Cricket
- Thread starter Mason
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Thande
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I remember reading, I'm not sure how accurate it is, that cricket was played in America as late as the Civil War and indeed was played during the Civil War by soldiers. I know Turtledove did his thing where he said baseball only caught on in the rest of the USA as opposed to New England because it was spread around by soldiers playing it during the war, so maybe cricket becomes top dog instead?
It does/did have the character of a fairly aristocratic game, though, which may make it unpopular in America. Baseball and rounders, by contrast, tended to be viewed as proletarian in the UK on the rarer occasions when they were played (AFAIK).
It does/did have the character of a fairly aristocratic game, though, which may make it unpopular in America. Baseball and rounders, by contrast, tended to be viewed as proletarian in the UK on the rarer occasions when they were played (AFAIK).
Here's an extensive PDF on American Cricket: Players and Clubs before the Civil War
http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH1984/JSH1101/jsh1101c.pdf
This should be a useful enough reference - it even has tables giving the profiles of the players (e.g. age, occupation, whether born in the US or not, etc).
23 pages in all.
http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH1984/JSH1101/jsh1101c.pdf
This should be a useful enough reference - it even has tables giving the profiles of the players (e.g. age, occupation, whether born in the US or not, etc).
23 pages in all.
Australia would still be the best cricketing nation in the world at the current time, so all this is moot really......
For the record I support Thande in regards to some version of Cricket being an Olympic sport..... Perhaps 20/20???
As for a MLC, you would see something probably occur along similar lines to the Baseball league.
For the record I support Thande in regards to some version of Cricket being an Olympic sport..... Perhaps 20/20???
As for a MLC, you would see something probably occur along similar lines to the Baseball league.
I think that a MLC and MLB coexisting would be more likely, and also slightly more interesting. But they would be very similar in structure and naming characteristics.
The league would probably start in the Northeast and expand, though that's also what baseball did pretty much, so I don't know if that's saying much.
Or it turns into a warbled hybrid that neither parent wants to claim.
The league would probably start in the Northeast and expand, though that's also what baseball did pretty much, so I don't know if that's saying much.
Or it turns into a warbled hybrid that neither parent wants to claim.
Funnily enough I was talking about this to an American friend the other day.
Apparently, Philadelphia was the epicentre of American cricket and it was only in the early 1900s that it started to die off.
Maybe a British touring side pops up in 1900 or so and creates real interest? Or the Ashes one year are held at Philadelphia? It could end up with the Eastern Pennsylvania area and maybe Delaware and New Jersey becoming cricket strongholds.
Maybe MLC and MLB would develop a sense of being two codes of a similar game, like the RFU and RFL for rugby in England?
So have Twenty20 cricket invented during the Civil War, it lasts about 3 hours. That then allows a structure very similar to MLB.
With a similar level of animosity? Would one game try to get the other game banned or ban players that play the other game? Would fans of one do things like put broken glass on the pitches of the other sport etc.?
The Pittsburgh Pirates may end up receiving their nickname for plucking players away from MLC, rather than the competing AA.