What to read to understand cricket

For at least two centuries, America’s closest thing to a national pastime was cricket. The game was played up and down the east coast throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. George Washington played it at Valley Forge. The first international fixture in any sport was a cricket match between America and Canada, in Manhattan in 1844. On the first day an estimated 20,000 people watched it. Few Americans know this history. The late 19th century saw a deep-pocketed campaign to establish baseball—a simpler bat-and-ball game—as the country’s first professional sport. Baseball’s promoters raided cricket clubs for talent while traducing cricket as a foreign affectation. And because history is written by the victors, that calumny has stuck. “Cricket is basically baseball on valium,” Robin Williams quipped.