America will not succumb to the charms of cricket

The Beatles did it; Radiohead did it; even Duran Duran did it," writes former England captain Mike Atherton in the Times, but cricket looks set to join Oasis, the Kinks and Robbie Williams on the list of British acts that have failed to break America.

"A combination of dreamers, chancers and fools have attempted to dispel the notion that the game is beyond the comprehension of Americans and now a businessman named Jay Mir, from an organisation called the American Sports and Entertainment Group, believes he can succeed where others, including most recently Allen Stanford, have failed."

What these hucksters fail to appreciate is that cricket has a hinterland that extends way beyond what a shallow marketing budget can penetrate. "Entrepreneurs who look at the bottom line alone, who view sport through dollars-and-cents eyewear, forget that it is a cultural phenomenon first and foremost as well as a business. Cricket's lack of popularity in America has little to do with the length or complexity of the game and more to do with the origins of baseball's remarkable story."

And don't lets forget, ends Atherton, that "cricket had its chance in America, but this was long before Mir, Stanford or any other sharp-eyed businessmen came along, dreaming of making millions by taking the game to new frontiers. In the 19th century it actually rivalled baseball for popularity and media interest and by 1850 there were cricket clubs in 22 states. But baseball's early protagonists marketed the game shrewdly as a truly American pastime."

And the rest was history. ·