I've been visiting espn.com for the past 10 years and have never seen anything related to cricket on top of the front page before. This is a good development. It certainly has to do with their new broadcast deal and should happen a lot more in the future. Some of the comments under their cricket articles were hostile but some were also neutral and curious about the sport. That's the thing.. there will always be some conservatives who will bash anything foreign and want nothing to challenge their sport and the status quo. But this is a country of 300 million with many different taste and increasingly open mind, thanks to the internet and interaction with people from all over the world. An exciting sport like cricket with so much similarities with American sports (high scoring, athleticism, toughness, breaks between plays, many strategies involved etc. etc.) and so many new/different elements to offer should be able to get a foothold here over time if necessary investments are made.
A lot more people will learn about cricket in the next few years and who knows, maybe some investors with vision will also emerge out of them who will come together and decide to take it to the next level. They will build 7-8 small but expandable stadiums around the country and start a professional T20 league with semi-decent payroll/talent level (with many players from the associate nations at first). Like most startup businesses it will lose money for a while but this will be a long-term play (similar to MLS) which will pay dividend over time. After some time, as cricket grows in popularity with lots of exposer on TV (esp. with world cups every other year and perhaps the US national team involvement), higher level investments would be made with stadium expansion and payroll increase to bring more players from test nations. The better quality would attract even more spectators at the gate and on TV. That combined with some investment, youth cricket would explode in the country, improving the US national team which will lead to even more increase in popularity for the sport. And, the upward spiral will continue.
Well, thats my dream anyway. The first part of my dream has already come true, so why not?
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