Shane Warne Kicks Off Cricket in the U.S.

Cricket is the second most popular sport in the world and now it’s being touted in coming to America. Australian Shane Warne, one of the world’s greatest (but retired) cricket players, spoke to the FOX Business Network’s Stuart Varney about raising awareness of the sport in bringing the sport to America.

“There’s two things Americans think about cricket, that crickets are too noisy outside their house when they try to sleep and that the games go on for five days” he said.

Famous cricket rivals Warne and India’s Sachin Tendulkar (another legendary cricket player) have built two teams featuring the best cricket players, who will  play three games in America this month, and a total of 15 games over the next three years. Their goal is to globalize the sport.

While cricket matches can range over a few days, these three games will be limited to three hours. Warne highlighted that cricket is a great sport for families to watch. “To me, it’s like WWE meets baseball” said Warne.

The American audience is already quite sizeable though, with roughly 100 million American viewers watching the Cricket World Cup this past February. “There’s so many people around the world who love the game of cricket, especially here in America,” said Warne.

Comparably, the biggest audience watching the championships in India was 500 million people, and close to a billion people viewed the India versus Pakistan game.

And now that Indians are the third largest immigrant group to the U.S., according to data from the Pew Research Center, the sport might pick up steam.

Playing the sport can carry with it big money. According to Warne, some of the biggest players like Tendulkar can make upwards of $10 million.