Breaking America?

Several months ago (see my March 26th post), I was excited to read of a planned American Premier League (APL) Twenty20 tournament to be held in New York in October. That particular tournament is now unlikely to go ahead, but the US cricket association has, unlike the APL’s organisers, received backing from the ICC (cricket’s main governing body) and is now in search of suitable partnerships to bring about the event.

Watch this space (as ever!), but don’t hold your breath even if sponsors and broadcasters are found. As Mike Atherton explained in a particularly fine Times column back in April, cricket’s best chance to become the big American sport came in the mid-19th century, when it rivalled baseball for popularity with clubs in 22 states. Once the rules of baseball were formalised in 1857 and the game spread to the South in the 1860s' Civil War, however, it grew rapidly. In 1905, the Mills Commission – set up to ascertain baseball’s origins – established the myth that it was a purely American invention, rather than evolving from (English) rounders, and it has been the US national sport ever since.

Cricket, by contrast, was marginalised and kept alive primarily by English, Indian and West Indian expats. Businessmen such as Sir Allen Stanford have attempted to create a market, but there has been little or no success as yet. In Joseph O'Neill's novel, Netherland, the dodgy Trinidadian entrepreneur, Chuck Ramkissoon, dreams of staging an international tournament in New York, but it remains a dream or, in O'Neill's words, "a metaphor for the boundaries of American perception." It is no accident that the hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, often termed the great American novel, has a business connection with the man said to have fixed baseball's 1919 World Series.

The great uncapped and life following art

Though it is, sadly, too late to make an entry for the Wisden England's Greatest Uncapped XI competition (in Tests), I'd nonetheless recommend a quick browse of the long list before the selection’s publication in the April issue, if only to be reminded of quite how shambolic 1990s selection was.

The striking thing, for me, about the list, was my lack of outrage on behalf of any modern player (except, very wishfully, Ali Brown). For much of the (almost) 15 years for which I’ve watched the national team, I was convinced that one county performer or another was being cruelly overlooked: Darren Maddy, Steve James, Robert Croft, Simon Brown, Mike Smith, Jon Lewis, Chris Adams and even Aftab Habib all seemed passed over too long for playing at unfashionable counties. Yet, as you’ll have noticed, all these players did, for better or, more often, worse, eventually play at least one Test.

The decade in which England sunk to the bottom of world cricket was ushered in by the selectors’ feat of picking 29 players in the 6-match 1989 Ashes series, with little improvement in consistency of selection until the introduction of central contracting. On the long list, then, are left the likes of Dougie Brown, Peter Bowler, Mark Wagh, Paul Johnson and Robin Martin-Jenkins, solid county pros certainly, but hardly prompting a tear in the eye at what might have been. At least latterly – Darren Pattinson aside – there has been method to selectors’ madness. Even if Cook and Bell have hung on for far too long.

Elsewhere in the cricketing world, life seems to be following art as plans are made for a New York tournament involving top (current and former) Pakistan players. This in the year after the publication of Joseph O’Neill’s (considerably over-hyped) novel Netherland, which tells the story of Trinidadian would-be Gatsby, Chuck Ramkissoon, whose dream is to set up New York’s first proper cricket stadium for an international tournament. Hopefully the entrepreneur Jay Mir’s plans will have happier results than Ramkissoon’s and I won’t provide the kiss of death for the second post running.