why england love cricket

What’s Up with British People and Cricket?

Or more specifically, English people and cricket - the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish couldn’t really give a rat’s ass...

The English love their cricket, and it’s a sport they’ve managed to export successfully to the majority of their former colonies. From the outside though, it can appear pretty boring - it’s a complicated and slow game, that in some forms can take up to five days to produce a winner!

Here in the states, we like our slow and tactical sports - compare a football or baseball game to a soccer or rugby match, and you’re at least doubling the time, and with a lot of breaks between plays to boot. Yet even for us, sitting down to watch five full days of bat and ball seems a stretch too far. 

The English Actually Suck at Cricket!

What’s perhaps most peculiar about the English’s love of cricket is the fact that they suck, and have done so for a long time. Just as they did with other sports, including soccer, they invented cricket, introduced the sport to the world on their Empirical path, then watched their colonial subjects master the sport and surpass them.

England are just off the back of an ass whooping at the hands of India, who outshone them in every aspect. The majority of England’s former colonies, including South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and the West Indies, have all enjoyed more cricketing success than England in recent decades. 

Why The English Suck 

So why is this? It could be down to the slightly declining popularity in English cricket compared to India or Pakistan. Or perhaps it’s down to the fact that England as a country actually has the least favorable conditions for which to play its own sport. If it rains during a cricket match, everyone goes inside to have a cup of tea and wait for it all to dry off, something that happens quite often in a country as rainy as England. 

Although this goes someway to explaining why the English suck compared to their counterparts with drier year round weather, it also explains is popularity. Going inside for a cup of tea because a sport has been rained out offers a very English solution to a very English problem. 

Why Don’t We Play Cricket in the US?

This question might have popped up in your mind, aside from England, all other countries with professional cricket leagues and national teams were former British colonies. Loathe as we are to admit it now, the US was once a British colony - how then did we, alongside Canada, avoid taking up cricket? 

The answer is pretty simple - we invested baseball instead. It didn’t take Americans long to figure out that most have us don’t have a spare 4 or 5 days to play or watch a sports game. Instead, we invented another game of a bat and ball with its own set of rules and a shorter game time. 

Just like cricket is over in England and a number of other countries, Baseball is both a great American summer past time and professional sport that we all love to watch.

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