‘Don’t call it cricket’: Ricky Ponting makes radical T20 pitch to win over US fans | Cricket News
Australian great Ricky Ponting has suggested a radical change in the way cricket is marketed in the United States, saying administrators should consider dropping the word ‘cricket’ altogether and promoting the sport simply as ‘T20’.With the United States emerging as a key part of the International Cricket Council (ICC)’s global growth strategy, Ponting believes the traditional name could be holding the sport back in a market more familiar with baseball, American football and basketball.The former Australia captain feels the word ‘cricket’ could lead new American audiences to immediately think of Test matches and their five-day format, rather than the shorter and more entertainment-driven T20 game.Speaking to The Athletic, Ponting acknowledged that he is a traditionalist who played far more Test cricket than T20 cricket. However, he said he would be open to a complete rebranding of the format if it helped attract a new generation of American sports fans.“If I was bringing it here wholly and solely to sell and promote the game, I wouldn’t call it cricket,” Ponting begins. “It’d just be rebranded as T20 only. Leave the cricket thing aside. As soon as young people hear cricket in parts of the world where they’re not brought up on the game, they think about it being a long, drawn-out, five-day game, and it’s not that.”Ponting also believes baseball could provide a useful comparison for introducing T20 to an American audience. Rather than focusing on the technical differences between the sports, he wants potential fans to understand the high-scoring nature of the shortest cricket format.“I would compare it to baseball as much as I could and give kids that chance to understand you’re hitting 15 sixes per game in a game of T20 cricket, but you are hitting less than one home run a game in the game of baseball.”The United States has become one of the ICC’s biggest development priorities, given the size and commercial strength of its sports market. While baseball, American football and basketball remain dominant, soccer has also been growing rapidly in the country.Cricket, meanwhile, has traditionally had a much smaller mainstream following in the US and has largely been played and followed by Asian, European and African expat communities.The ICC has been attempting to broaden that audience through a series of major initiatives. The country hosted a successful T20 World Cup in 2024, while Major League Cricket has been developed as a domestic competition. Ponting himself is involved in the league as coach of Washington Freedom.The ICC is also working towards cricket’s return to the Olympic stage at the Los Angeles 2028 Games, with efforts underway to develop suitable grounds and infrastructure in the US.With T20 at the centre of many of those efforts, Ponting believes presenting the sport as a fast-paced, modern product rather than immediately associating it with Test cricket could help the ICC connect with American audiences.
Source link
