Cricket’s Golden Chance to Go Global

Over the past decade, Cricket World Cups have come around more frequently than Marvel spin-offs. But the ongoing ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka may just be the most important edition till date. Not least because it has 20 participants across five continents (the most for an ICC tournament) or that more than 450 million people witnessed India outplay Pakistan on February 15.

For a sport that long felt like a colonial hangover on the international stage, cricket is finally beginning to find its global footprint, just in time for its return to the Olympic Games in Los Angeles after a 128-year hiatus.

The first-ever recognised international cricket match took place between the US and Canada in September 1844 in New York. But it was the combination of England (the inventors of the game) and Australia (England’s fiercest, and often only, rivals) that kept cricket alive in the 1800s and early 1900s. The latter half of the 20th century saw the cricketing cognoscenti slowly diversify to involve newly independent nations in South Asia and Africa, but the ‘gentleman’s game’ failed to make much headway in Europe and the Americas. 

Even 10 years ago, when India last hosted the Men’s T20 World Cup, the sporting consensus was that cricket was content being loved by a few instead of being liked by many. Unlike other team sports like football (or soccer), hockey, rugby, and basketball, cricket felt inaccessible in many Western geographies, with its relative complexity (three formats, a litany of rules) and limited international visibility identified as legitimate, if somewhat, lazy explanations. When given the chance, even former England batter Kevin Pietersen could not explain cricket to pop icon Taylor Swift (on a memorable episode of The Graham Norton Show).

But look at the sensation that this T20 World Cup is turning out to be. This is a tournament that has seen Australia eliminated for only the second time in the group stage (previously in 2009), Italy beat Nepal, England almost lose to Nepal, the Netherlands and Pakistan as well as the UAE and Canada play out thrillers, and South Africa and Afghanistan tie the same game twice, before the Proteas eventually clinched the second super over!

On February 15, in the tournament’s most anticipated encounter till the knockouts come knocking, India and Pakistan met for the seventh successive occasion at the Men’s T20 World Cup (the ICC doesn’t take chances with lotteries when allocating groups!). Their inaugural pair of face-offs in South Africa in 2007, including a nail-biting final in Johannesburg, helped set the tone for T20 action. Fifteen years later, when they went toe-to-toe in Melbourne, Virat Kohli produced arguably the most replayed innings in modern cricket — former Australian captain and ex-Indian men’s team coach Greg Chappell called it a “song by god” — that has become the subject of entire documentaries. 

This time, there’s no on-song Kohli in the middle but the competition sure has brought an assortment of colours and cultures to a sport unfairly dismissed in the past as a niche cousin of baseball. A quick glance at this World Cup’s fixture list, and you would be forgiven for wondering if you were looking at the itinerary of the 2026 men’s FIFA World Cup instead. Case in point: at the time of writing this piece, Eden Gardens in Calcutta is playing host to England vs Italy with no Harry Kane or Gianluigi Donnarumma in sight!

Following decades of mismanagement and missed opportunities, cricket is finally batting for its cause as a serious global sport. And everyone else seems ready to play ball.

It is no exaggeration to say that Indians are the fundamental reason behind cricket’s push for global relevance. While cricketers such as Virat Kohli, whose Instagram following is more than that of pop star Shakira and footballer Kylian Mbappe combined, have cultivated superstar status beyond the pitch, the BCCI (India’s governing body for cricket) has been instrumental in creating an ecosystem that has allowed India to sit at the head of cricket’s ever-expanding table. 

However, it is the average Indian cricket fan who has had an outsize impact on the growth of the game.

Of cricket’s estimated global fan base of 2.5 billion (second only to football’s 3.5 billion, according to Irish sports organisation Sport for Business), the largest and loudest are Indians. Including the Indian diaspora in Australia, England, and South Africa, who regularly make the countries of their residence feel like away teams in their home matches against India. 

Last November’s ICC Women’s World Cup final between India and South Africa attracted a viewership of 185 million on JioHotstar alone, comfortably surpassing numbers shared by American broadcasters for this year’s Super Bowl. In June 2024, when the Indian men’s team won the T20 World Cup for the second time (with South Africa again on the wrong end of the result), the numbers were equally staggering. 

Broadcasting rights for the latest four-year cycle of ICC’s global events went for more than $3 billion, while the Indian Premier League (IPL), the leading T20 franchise competition in the world, sold its media rights for five years (from 2023) for $6.2 billion. These jaw-dropping figures are possible largely because of Indians’ insatiable appetite for cricket, which does not seem to dip even when they move abroad. No wonder that most of the heaviest investors in franchise cricket across the world are Indian-origin entrepreneurs, many of whom are tech billionaires.

Yet, for cricket to become genuinely global, the export of Indian fandom isn’t enough. Other populations must also embrace the sport organically, something former Australian all-rounder Shane Watson is optimistic about, especially in the US: “There is such a huge potential for growth in the US market. Within 10 years or so, I believe a lot of good cricketers will come out of the US.”

“If you look at the top 20 global sports [this century], cricket has been the fastest growing, and it is almost all to do with T20, its most simple and accessible format,” believes Gareth Balch, the chief executive and co-founder of global sports marketing firm Two Circles.

Eoin Morgan, England’s solitary men’s 50-over World Cup-winning captain, goes one step further. “I think if the shortest format of the game did not exist…. cricket would end up dying in a ditch…. T20 cricket has changed the game forever,” he recently said.

Lasting no more than three hours and usually played in the evenings, a T20 game is an expression of ‘batriarchy’ built for family entertainment. Batters have full freedom to attack and bowlers have no option but to fight back. “There’s so much competition in the global landscape now. I think all the advent of the [T20] franchise leagues around the world has just grown the depth of women’s cricket,” suggests Australia’s eight-time world champion cricketer Ellyse Perry. 

In the age of social media, cricket finds new followers not through word-of-mouth or elaborate campaigns, but through reels and shorts of scintillating sixes, toe-crushing yorkers, and outrageous catches. All of which have been in abundant supply at this T20 World Cup, where unpredictability has been the hallmark.

Cricket made its Olympics debut in 1900 in Paris, only to be reduced to a solitary encounter between Great Britain and France. In 2028, it is set for a hard-hitting return, as six teams battle it out for the right to be called cricket’s first Olympic champions in the women’s and men’s categories. “It just opens up completely different audiences to our game that’s seemingly growing on a daily basis anyway. It can only be a real positive thing…” feels Ricky Ponting, who captained Australia to 50-over World Cup glory in 2003 and 2007, on cricket’s Olympian comeback. 

It’s no surprise that the chosen format for the Olympics is T20, meaning for Americans, Chinese, Germans, Nigerians, or Koreans already curious about the nature of the competition, tuning into World Cup 2026 is ideal preparation. Ukrainians, for their part, are probably watching already, given their first-ever cricket academy opens in Kiev this month.

Back in 1970, the FIFA World Cup in Mexico had been the first of its kind to be broadcast in colour to a global audience. With an electrifying Brazilian team cruising to the title in their unforgettable yellow, blue, and grin kit, football ensconced itself in the imagination of fresh legions of fans (particularly in North America and Asia). Today FIFA has more member countries than the United Nations. For cricket, the 2026 Men’s T20 World Cup could have a similar catalytic effect. 

“T20 is a type of cricket that can bring a different type of person to the game that does not watch cricket… [it] has the potential to make it a truly worldwide game,” said former Australian bowler Glenn McGrath, back in 2015. More than a decade later, as attention spans dwindle and sports double down as ‘live content’, T20 cricket is uniquely poised to occupy new minds and markets. Brands have already sensed this, with Hyundai beginning a global partnership with the ICC in 2026, whose campaign will be fronted by Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan.

As for the ICC itself, the organisation officially in charge of cricket, its membership of 108 is somewhat deceptive, since only 12 of those have ‘full’ status. These are also the only countries where cricket is a popular pastime as well as a compelling career. But this T20 World Cup is creating a buzz from the pubs of Glasgow to the pizzerias of Naples, from the malls of Kathmandu to the thoroughfares of Amsterdam and beyond. It marks the first time that so many nations not known for playing cricket have made their presence felt, narrowing the gulf between established squads and the so-called minnows. This is the moment for cricket to show the rest of the world that it isn’t all that hard to understand, and can deliver non-stop drama. 

Come 2028 in Los Angeles, the likes of Abhishek Sharma, Cameron Green, and Smriti Mandhana will light up the Olympics, seizing an opportunity of a lifetime to share the flame with bona fide global icons such as Neeraj Chopra, Armand Duplantis, and Coco Gauff. This T20 World Cup is cricket’s biggest step yet to ensure they don’t feel out of place.