Between 1850 and 1914, cricket vied with baseball as a popular spectator sport in the northeastern United States. Like so many sports, it started out as a working man’s game, played by English immigrant millworkers who drank and placed bets during their precious days off. By the Gilded Age, it was played by gentlemen of leisure who faced off against Lord Hawke’s men on the creases of the Germantown, Philadelphia, and Merion clubs, making Philadelphia the center of the game in America. Yet for players such as John Barton “Bart” King, finding the time to play 5-day test matches while earning a living proved to be a huge challenge.
Eventually, the conundrum of time and money doomed cricket in this country.
It has since become the butt of jokes among comedians like Groucho Marx, who, after watching a game at England’s Marylebone Cricket Club, declared: "What a wonderful cure for insomnia. If you can't sleep here, you really need an analyst.”
In recent years, cricket has enjoyed a small renaissance in America, capped this past June by the American team’s defeat of Pakistan in this year’s ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in Dallas.
Gentleman or Amateur?