Street Cricket - The Key To Attracting New Fans to the Sport?

Football, cricket, hockey, tennis. Four sports that have the largest number of fans worldwide. Of that quartet, football has amassed a far larger global following than any of the other three.

But just what has made football (or soccer, depending on which part of the globe you’re from) so popular?

Perhaps the key to football’s popularity is its simplicity.

Two teams compete to get the ball in the opponent’s goal. As straightforward as that. Sure, there may be a little more to football than first meets the eye, but even a toddler could grasp the basic concept of the sport.

But not only is it simple to understand, football is easy to play too; all that is required is a small patch of land, willing participants and something that vaguely resembles a ball.

It’s cheap too, allowing people from all classes of society to enjoy the beautiful game. A  football can be picked up for little more than the price of a cheese sandwich, but even that expenditure isn’t necessary; water bottles, plastic bags and even pig's stomach serve as makeshift balls.

A 'garbage ball' made from plastic bags and string

Now contrast that with cricket.

Few sports are as wonderfully complicated; just explaining the different fielding positions to a novice could take up to an hour. From the amount of grass on the pitch or the weather conditions to the shine on the ball, so many different factors affect a game of cricket.

the various fielding positions in cricket

Trying to explain cricket to a 3 year-old would probably be a similar experience to teaching your pet fish Russian. To an outsider, hearing two cricket fans discuss the game can sound rather like eavesdropping on two people speaking a different language.

Another advantage football has over the game we love is its speed.

Football is a fast moving, free flowing sport. As amazing as test cricket is, there are few people who would be able to describe Dom Sibley’s innings against the West Indies the other day as edge of the seat stuff.  

Even cricket’s most fast paced format, T20, lasts around three hours.

As much as I adore cricket, the comparisons listed above offer an explanation as to why so many youngsters around the world choose to play football instead of cricket.

But with the recent advent of organized street cricket competitions, perhaps this could change. 

Street cricket combats many of the factors that put people off the game we love; it is uncomplicated, fast-paced, short, sharp and requires minimal gear.

Played with a tape ball and a bat and consisting of just twenty balls per innings and six players per side, it’s beautifully simple and easy to grasp. For those living in inner-city areas with little green space around, finding somewhere to play or a club to represent can be a challenge, but with street cricket it’s all in the name - you can play pretty much anywhere.

Forget the traditional whites, there’s no uniform of any sort required or any pads, helmets or gloves needed.

In the subcontinent, this type of cricket has been thriving for many years (known there as gully cricket), but in other nations organized street cricket could be key to spreading cricket to more deprived areas and getting people who wouldn’t have otherwise been interested into the sport to develop a love of the game.

Even the home of cricket, Lords, a place about as traditional as they come, has embraced street cricket, with the Child Street Cricket World Cup being held there last year.

In the UK, a street cricket program is being rolled out and results have already been extremely positive.

Street cricket has clearly helped reach a new audience in the country, with 87% of participants not part of a cricket club when they enrolled for the sessions. Cricket has often been viewed as a middle class game, especially in more developed nations, but the street cricket program could help the sport loose that tag, with three quarters of participants coming from some of the UK’s most deprived areas. 78% of 658 street cricketers surveyed said they had met people from different backgrounds according to the program’s website, Chance to Shine.

All participants have the chance to progress to local, regional and even national competitions, giving them a greater platform to show their skills.

While traditionalists may scoff at the idea, or claim that it’s ‘just not cricket’, like all things cricket must evolve and adapt if it wants to grow and spread. If street cricket is helping to attract more people to the sport, break down social barriers and help integration between different ethnic groups, then surely it is for the better of cricket and society as a whole.

Whether the only cricket you’ll ever play is on a Sunday at the local club in your whites, or in an urban area after school in a tracksuit, you’re still a cricketer.

A game of cricket played in the traditional whites

So, what next for street cricket?

Maybe other cricketing nations need to look at the example set in the United Kingdom and think about setting up their own street cricket programs. If it has been so successful in Britain, why couldn’t it be equally so in South Africa, Australia or New Zealand?

But perhaps street cricket needs to look bigger.

If the programs have been able to attract people who didn’t previously play for cricket clubs in the UK, then surely street cricket could get people interested in the sport in less traditional cricketing nations and help to grow the game around the world.

After all, just like football, the world’s most popular sport, street cricket is simple, fast-paced, cheap to play, can be played almost anywhere and, after all, it is easier to explain to a three year old than it is to teach your pet fish Russian. 

As always, thanks for reading and if you enjoyed this please pass it on to anyone else you know that loves cricket.