USA stuns Pakistan in a colossal upset victory -- in Cricket!!

[jgb191]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/cricket/usa-stun-pakistan-in-t20-world-cup-super-over/ar-BB1nLk2g?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=883d27ea03a84462897d2d6183a27c88&ei=9#comments


I don't understand cricket, but this is a feel-good story of shocking sorts.  Pakistan has had a very rich cricket  history, but fell to the USA, a new country to the sport.

[Rothman]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/cricket/usa-stun-pakistan-in-t20-world-cup-super-over/ar-BB1nLk2g?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=883d27ea03a84462897d2d6183a27c88&ei=9#comments


I don't understand cricket, but this is a feel-good story of shocking sorts.  Pakistan has had a very rich cricket  history, but fell to the USA, a new country to the sport.

It was only a matter of time until the USA realized that many of its athletic skills could make it dominant in this sport.

[Road Hog]

It's T20 cricket, which is not a form of the sport I understand, but still a famous victory for the U.S.

Almost the entire squad is of Caribbean or South Asian origin, but the U.S. always cheers laundry.

[mgk920]

Cricket WAS the major sport in the USA prior to the Civil War era.  The troops of Washington's Army during the Revolutionary War played pick up cricket during their free time.  The first ever international cricket match was between teams from the USA and Canada and was played in NYC (about 1848?).  what doomed it here was by the 1870s or 1880s,  the sport internationally was professionalizing while those who were in charge of the sport here resisted that.  The resulting competitive sports vacuum was filled by baseball and the rest was history.  Had the forces in Canada and the USA instead embraced pro cricket, the game would be a more passionately followed thing here in North America than it is in India and Pakistan (why have the two not fought a vicious war against each other since the mid 20th century?) and everyone else in the cricket playing world would be continually gunning for and trash talking the USA national team.  Still, I often see people playing pick up cricket games in predominately Asian Indian neighborhoods here, so there is, IMHO, enough interest and available talent to field a competent and competitive USA national team.

Mike

[jgb191]

This is clearly nowhere near as close to the shocking upset of the Miracle on Ice in 1980, but what just transpired here I would think could be almost to an upset magnitude like foreign country, which is relatively new to baseball, putting together their own baseball team and beating a team of MLB All-Stars.

But as mentioned earlier the Caribbean, Canadian, and American cricket teams are almost all comprised of players of South Asian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal,...) immigrants or their descendants. 

[epzik8]

So this means cricket has broken America now, right?

[mgk920]

But as mentioned earlier the Caribbean, Canadian, and American cricket teams are almost all comprised of players of South Asian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal,...) immigrants or their descendants. 

But they ARE 'US Americans', right?

Also, the 'West Indies' (often called the 'Windies') is a team that is on par with the other 'national' teams of the cricket playing world.  They play the natively there.

Mike

[jgb191]

But as mentioned earlier the Caribbean, Canadian, and American cricket teams are almost all comprised of players of South Asian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal,...) immigrants or their descendants. 

But they ARE 'US Americans', right?

Also, the 'West Indies' (often called the 'Windies') is a team that is on par with the other 'national' teams of the cricket playing world.  They play the natively there.

Mike

Yeah the English-speaking Caribbean -- Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, etc -- have been well represented in the sport for generations I guess probably because of the very large percentage of its population of South Asian descent.

As for the American team, I heard on radio that only a handful of the players are born in the USA.  I don't know what the requirements are to represent the USA (citizenship or residency), but I'm sure several more players (if not the rest of the team) on the US team are also naturalized citizens along with the native-born players.  I don't know if green card holders are allowed to represent if they so choose to.

[Max Rockatansky]

So stunning that it was nothing but crickets?

[mgk920]

IMHO, if someone is born or naturalized in the USA, he or she is an 'US-American' and is eligible to play for a USA national team.  Let the sport grow back naturally, there are now 330-340 million of us here, plenty to go around.

I follow golf, boxing and tennis very little, but I am 'conversant' in the sports and do not disparage those who do follow them more closely.

Mike

[mgk920]

But as mentioned earlier the Caribbean, Canadian, and American cricket teams are almost all comprised of players of South Asian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal,...) immigrants or their descendants. 

But they ARE 'US Americans', right?

Also, the 'West Indies' (often called the 'Windies') is a team that is on par with the other 'national' teams of the cricket playing world.  They play the natively there.

Mike

Yeah the English-speaking Caribbean -- Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, etc -- have been well represented in the sport for generations I guess probably because of the very large percentage of its population of South Asian descent.

As for the American team, I heard on radio that only a handful of the players are born in the USA.  I don't know what the requirements are to represent the USA (citizenship or residency), but I'm sure several more players (if not the rest of the team) on the US team are also naturalized citizens along with the native-born players.  I don't know if green card holders are allowed to represent if they so choose to.

The game was developed in England (as was 'futbol') and those places were or still are part of the British Commonwealth.  As with southern Asian countries, cricket is a national passion in Australia and New Zealand, as is Rugby (also developed in England).

Mike

[english si]

what doomed it here was by the 1870s or 1880s,  the sport internationally was professionalizing while those who were in charge of the sport here resisted that.

Not sure that was the case - soccer was professionalising, cricket was only semi-professionalising: you had 'players' who got paid (because the people who weren't independently wealthy couldn't regularly spend several days away from work to play away matches, or several months in the case of international tours), but 'gentlemen' retained their amateur status (the same was sought in soccer, but the pros there basically reinvented how to play the sport and amateurs were left behind, which wasn't the case with Cricket), albeit with some earning bucketloads in sponsorships and 'expenses'. Gentlemen and players had separate entrances out onto the ground at many stadia until the 1960s due to the same nonsense class-snobbery that amateurism is noble and better that still exists in the US with college sports.

However, an excellent rundown of the history of Cricket in America.

The resulting competitive sports vacuum was filled by baseball and the rest was history.

Whereas Baseball (invented either in England or Ireland, depending on who you talk too) disappeared over this side of the pond because it didn't professionalise. You'll get kids playing rounders at school (and, despite years of that, we all struggled when we did softball aged 15 due to the need to hit the ball more narrowly forward - because us poorer players couldn't hit straight and needed something more forgiving, and because the better players were used to finding a gap and found it where we didn't put fielders as it was foul territory) but they also do a modified form of cricket as well (and real cricket if their school can, when they are older, as long as its dry).

But as mentioned earlier the Caribbean, Canadian, and American cricket teams are almost all comprised of players of South Asian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal,...) immigrants or their descendants.

Yeah the English-speaking Caribbean -- Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, etc -- have been well represented in the sport for generations I guess probably because of the very large percentage of its population of South Asian descent.

The 'South Asians love cricket, therefore this country plays cricket well because it has a lot of South Asian heritage people' thing has perhaps been a factor in the Windies for the last 30 years, though more at the grass-roots, as the US influence on the Caribbean has grown and with it a love of Basketball. Though that's more an Afro-Caribbeans are more likely to be the body type to play basketball than Indo-Caribbeans, rather than Afro-Caribbeans have stopped liking cricket. And it's never been the case that they didn't (other than in the way that 10CC described in their song - they don't like cricket, they love it).

The Windies team remains a representative mix of heritages (though actual information about that for individual players isn't given, because - despite the pernicious influence of the US and it's love of 'my great great grandad was born in County Cork and moved to the US as a child, so I'm Irish' type bolx on the area - its not something that matters).

There's a better case for the Netherlands and their East Indian trade giving them cricket than the moving of people from the British Raj (though I think its more due to South Africa, IIRC) to the Windies giving them cricket. Not least as the Windies were playing cricket for generations before the South Asians came.

The game was developed in England (as was 'futbol') and those places were or still are part of the British Commonwealth.  As with southern Asian countries, cricket is a national passion in Australia and New Zealand

Yep - the Windies play cricket for the same reason the USA did - it was coloured pink on the map.

----

As for first generation immigrants forming the team - this is common for many of the well-established sides. The English player who took the last 4 US wickets in 5 balls earlier today* was playing on the island he was born on (Barbados, and he's definitely Afro-Caribbean, rather than Indo-Caribbean, in heritage).

Several England captains of my adulthood have been immigrants from other cricketing nations - South African-born (Strauss, Piertersen) or Kiwi-born (Strauss) (I'm ignoring the Irish-born Eoin Morgan as Ireland only became a fully-fledged cricketing country after he had established himself as an England player). This is unsurprising when you realise the large amount of inter-migration that has gone on for generations between many of the 12 countries that play at the top level.

*An absolute shame - they've played very well this tournament for a team that only got accredited 5 years ago (they had lost that accreditation a couple of years before), massively exceeded expectations to reach the Super-8 (in a way that teams like Ireland and Afghanistan did not too long ago, and now they have been welcomed onto the top table), and then they end their batting by losing the last 5 wickets for no runs in just 6 balls. And at least they got another over after the one where they went for 32 as five maximums (6s) in a row to end your bowling would have been just as terrible as how they ended their batting!