Ricky Ponting believes cricket should consider dropping its own name when selling the sport to new audiences in the United States, arguing that T20 can be positioned as a distinct entertainment product better suited to breaking into the American market.
The former Australia captain has spent the past two years coaching Washington Freedom in Major League Cricket (MLC), giving him a direct role in one of the sport’s biggest attempts to establish a sustainable professional presence in the US.
Ponting told The Athletic: “If I was bringing it here wholly and solely to sell and promote the game, I wouldn’t call it cricket. It’d just be rebranded as T20 (Twenty20 cricket) 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.”
Baseball could provide the bridge to American fans
T20’s roughly three-hour duration gives cricket a format that can be positioned alongside established American sports without requiring newcomers to first understand the traditions of the five-day game.
For Ponting, baseball provides an obvious reference point for introducing the format to young Americans. He added: “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 comparison extends beyond scoring. Ponting views the similar duration of T20 and baseball as an opportunity to demonstrate the amount of action packed into cricket’s shortest established international format.
His willingness to separate T20’s identity from the broader cricket brand does not reflect a rejection of the traditional game. Ponting, whose playing career was overwhelmingly associated with Test cricket, believes emerging markets require a different approach. He sees the longer format as potentially capable of developing an American audience over time, but regards shorter forms of cricket as more immediately marketable.
Ponting wants faster grassroots growth
MLC has attracted substantial investment and high-profile players, but its expansion has not progressed as quickly as Ponting hoped when he became involved.
The Washington Freedom Coach has identified grassroots participation as an area requiring greater attention. Ponting noted: “One of the reasons I got involved in MLC at the start was because I wanted to be here in the U.S. and be part of the growth, and it’s just been a little slower than I would have liked. I don’t think they’ve been active enough in getting out there and promoting it at the grassroots level.”
MLC currently operates more like a typical concentrated tournament than a conventional season-long American sports league, with last season’s matches staged in California and Texas because not every franchise has its own home venue. Its investor base, however, includes prominent figures and organisations from US business and professional sport, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen and 49ers Enterprises, the investment arm of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers. Three IPL teams also own MLC teams that reflect their brands, with two of them owned outright.
Ponting sees youth recruitment as central to turning that investment into a broader American playing base. He said: “There are more kids we can get involved at a young age and we can start poaching some kids away from baseball to play T20. That’s where it’s got to go if we want the game to really grow quickly here in the U.S., tapping into the entertainment package that T20 provides.”
Cricket builds a bigger US platform
The push to expand cricket in America has gained momentum through major events and new infrastructure. The US co-hosted the 2024 T20 World Cup with the West Indies, including a sold-out India-Pakistan match at Eisenhower Park on Long Island, while the US team’s unexpected victory over Pakistan generated further domestic attention.
Los Angeles 2028 will provide another major opportunity, with T20 cricket returning to the Olympic programme after a 128-year absence. A 10,000-capacity cricket stadium is being developed in Pomona, California, and is also set to become the home venue of MLC franchise Los Angeles Knight Riders.
Those developments follow several previous attempts to establish professional cricket in the US. The Pro Cricket League lasted only one season in 2004, while other leagues and exhibition competitions struggled to build beyond cricket’s existing diaspora audiences.
