Cricket does not just need wealthy people. Cricket needs large markets that can help it grow and thus far the ICC has been very poor on how they have developed the game in currently underserved markets. As noted in another thread and in many posts on this website, the ICC only sees "how can we wrangle more money out of India for our annual tournaments?"
Association football (which we call soccer here in the States) has steadily built up the game because they took the long, appropriate route of getting everyone bought in. I played soccer as a young boy even though I had no intent of ever becoming a professional in the sport-it was just a fun thing to do. It's grown here over time, the USA team is considered good, and it has a solid professional following here in the states because leadership decided to work at growing the game in America. It helps that it's cheap in terms of equipment compared with cricket-all you need is a ball, some sneakers/tennis shoes, and to have clothes you can run around it. If you want to do a more organized game like a soccer league then you have uniforms which can be quite affordable too. The same has applied to basketball which has become a popular sport in Europe, East Asia, as well as the United States.
Where's the strategic thinking to get more everyday Americans involved in cricket? There are 200k people who play in cricket leagues in the USA. Has any thought been given to focusing MLC games in cities with existing fan bases? There is a huge desi community in South Florida yet no matches are played there. I hear one of the IPL owners is building a stadium for MI New York. I might disagree with Indians on many things but that's a really good decision-now you have a permanent venue to hold cricket matches. Where is the work by USA cricket and the ICC to get USA cricket more matches against Test sides? How about first class tours for the younger players? Steven Taylor and Aaron Jones were basically the products of years of hard work between WICB developing them initially and the slow professionalization of the side. Yet despite being offered many opportunities to get publicity between Netflix offering to send a shadow to cover the USA team post the Pakistan win and Good Morning America offering them the chance to have a full TV interview prior to their match vs India-nothing was done! It was free publicity and yet USA cricket turned that down!
We've talked about growing the game in China. That would be a very positive step forward but ICC is doing nothing to grow it. . Work to grow the game in the Netherlands, it's already got an established cricket team and that's a decent market.
If you're going to take all this money from India (and to a lesser extent Pakistan, UK, Australia, and Bangladesh), then some ROI needs to be gained in terms of cricketing growth in nations not currently playing the game but could be brought into the game.
Afghanistan and Ireland were good adds to be sure, but Afghanistan still can't play international matches at home and Ireland is still a bit of a smaller market for a Test Nation. USA is where Afghanistan was around 10 years ago and I question if the ICC is going to do the work-so far they've just seen this market as a gate revenue opportunity and don't seem interested in truly gaining a non-desi following for cricket in America.
