Cricket in the United States
Cricket2 was played by British colonists in North America by the start of the 18th century.Archived references to cricket played in America date from 1709.A New York newspaper from 1739 contains an advertisement for cricket players and the first documented competition occurred in 1751 in M anhattan3.The first cricket clubs in the USA were established in the 1700s，not long after they made their first appearance in England.Originally played by officers of the British Army with local landed gentry predisposed to be Anglophiles，cricket became amajor recreation of American gentlemen of leisure…and indeed，several Founding Fathers of the United States were known to be avid cricketers—John Adams among them，who stated in the USCongress in the 1780s that if leaders of cricket clubs could be called“presidents”，there was no reason why the leader of the new nation could not be called the same.
7-1 Cricket in 1937
Cricketwas considered the firstmajor organized American team sport，and it saw an upsurge in players in the 1840s.The St.George Cricket Club，for example，was formed in Manhattan in 1839.Cricket teams consisted mainly ofmiddle and upper-classmen，and asmany as four hundred cricket clubs，with ten thousand members，were playingmatches by 1860，sometimes in intercitymatches as far west as Chicago and Milwaukee.
7-2 International Cricket Com petition
International competition began as early as 1840，with a match between the United States and Canada，and an English all-star squad defeated the North Americans in 1859.Before the Civil War，cricket clubs proved popular in several American cities.Philadelphia became a leading cricket center，with wealthy Victorianmen playing the sport to reinforce their social class and privileged position.Such elites might join the Philadelphia Cricket Club or other groups，as the city was home to some of the oldest cricket clubs in the United States.Club members in the Victorian era4 favored the“widely-held belief thatmoral，social，and vocational values could be developed through cricket”.As a consequence，certain Philadelphians steered their sons toward the gamewith the intent of socializing them to be productive and successful adults.