Wall Street Takes a Look: How Cricket Is Finally Finding Its American Moment. Or, Is it?

When cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar stood on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday morning, October 3, 2025, preparing to ring the opening bell alongside National Cricket League Chairman Arun Agarwal, the symbolism was unmistakable: cricket was demanding Wall Street’s attention—and by extension, America’s.

The National Cricket League entered the global financial spotlight as Chairman Arun Agarwal and cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar rang the Opening Bell at the New York Stock Exchange, symbolizing the league’s growing influence at the intersection of sports, business, and culture, according to PRNewswire via Street Insider.

Hours later, the first ball of the NCL tournament would be bowled in Dallas.

The bell-ringing ceremony capped the announcement of a partnership between the NCL and NYSE Texas. The NCL’s inaugural tournament runs October 3–13, 2025 at the University of Texas at Dallas, according to Yahoo Finance. The tournament features six franchises, nightly themes honoring veterans, alumni, healthcare heroes, and sustainability, plus international stars and mentors.

For Tendulkar, arguably cricket’s greatest player, the NYSE appearance represented a strategic deployment of star power to legitimize the sport in a skeptical market.

Signs of Growth

The timing comes amid genuine momentum. According to CBS News, more than 400 cricket leagues have opened in America, with over 200,000 players and counting, according to USA Cricket.

The 2024 T20 World Cup, co-hosted by the United States and the West Indies, provided crucial validation. The ICC reported that the Men’s T20 World Cup drew unprecedented interest for cricket in the U.S., with 190,000 fans attending matches across the country, according to The Reynolds Center.

That World Cup also delivered a watershed moment: on June 6, 2024, Team USA shocked the cricket world by beating Pakistan, according to Scripps News and The Week. The upset thrust cricket into the national spotlight in ways that years of grassroots organizing had failed to achieve.

Major League Cricket, which launched before the NCL, showed initial promise. Season one brought in more than 70,000 spectators, generating $2.8 million in ticket sales revenue, according to the Hindustan Times. In May 2024, the ICC granted Major League Cricket official List A status, resulting in recognition as a “T20 league” with tournament records counted as official statistics.

Cricket has experienced false dawns in America before. What makes this moment potentially different is the combination of institutional support (the NYSE partnership), celebrity endorsement (Tendulkar’s involvement), recent competitive success (the World Cup victory), and growing grassroots participation.

The Awareness Gap

Yet cricket remains niche. A YouGov survey conducted ahead of the 2024 T20 World Cup found that 10 percent of Americans were aware of Major League Cricket, while awareness for leagues like the Indian Premier League and the ICC T20 Cricket World Cup stood at 6 percent. Most tellingly: eight in 10 Americans indicated they were not aware of any cricket leagues, according to YouGov.

This represents cricket’s fundamental challenge. The sport isn’t just competing for viewer attention—it’s competing for cultural relevance in a country where most people have never seen a match and don’t understand the rules.

Why This Moment May Be Different

Several factors converge to make this potentially different from previous attempts. First, demographics are shifting. As a melting pot of different cultures and ethnicities, the United States boasts a sizable population with backgrounds rooted in cricket-loving nations, according to The Lamron. The South Asian diaspora represents a built-in fan base.

Second, the 2024 T20 World Cup co-hosting gave American audiences exposure to high-level cricket on home soil. USA Cricket’s co-hosting was part of efforts to help develop and promote cricket in the United States, where the sport’s fanbase largely consists of South Asian diaspora, according to Wikipedia. The U.S. victory over Pakistan created media attention cricket in America had rarely received.

Third, the success of soccer has demonstrated that American sporting culture can expand beyond traditional boundaries. Cricket advocates hope for a similar trajectory.

Fourth, the T20 format is designed for American attention spans. Unlike Test cricket, which can last five days, T20 matches are completed in roughly three hours—comparable to baseball or football games.

The Business Case and Cultural Challenge

The NYSE partnership signals that cricket’s American ambitions now have financial backing. The franchise model, successfully employed by the Indian Premier League, offers a proven template. If the NCL can create compelling local rivalries and market its international stars effectively, the business case could become self-sustaining.

However, cricket faces structural challenges. The sport requires specialized facilities, significant time for skill development, and competes for athletic talent with established American sports offering clearer pathways to college scholarships and professional careers.

Perhaps cricket’s biggest challenge is cultural. American sports culture emphasizes statistics, individual achievement, and dramatic moments—all of which cricket offers. Yet the sport’s terminology (silly mid-on, leg before wicket, maiden over), complex rules, and sometimes glacial pace create barriers to entry.

The NCL’s approach—featuring nightly themes honoring veterans and healthcare heroes, emphasizing sustainability—suggests organizers understand they must translate cricket into American cultural idioms. The sport can’t simply be imported; it must be adapted to reflect American values.

The Test Ahead

Cricket is steadily growing in popularity in the United States, according to Sports Management Worldwide. But “gaining traction” and “becoming mainstream” remain very different achievements.

Cricket has experienced false dawns in America before. What makes this moment potentially different is the combination of institutional support (the NYSE partnership), celebrity endorsement (Tendulkar’s involvement), recent competitive success (the World Cup victory), and growing grassroots participation.

Cricket’s American future will be determined not by spectacular ceremonies or celebrity ambassadors, but by whether young Americans choose to play the sport, whether families attend matches, and whether television networks believe cricket can attract advertisers.

The NCL’s launch represents cricket’s latest—and perhaps best-funded—attempt to answer the question that has haunted the sport for decades: can cricket finally become American?

As Tendulkar and Agarwal rang that bell on Thursday morning, they were betting the answer is yes. The next ten days in Dallas, and the years that follow, will reveal whether that confidence is justified or whether cricket in America remains a sport of immigrants playing for nostalgia rather than a truly American pastime embraced by the mainstream.

The ceremony came just hours before the first ball of the NCL tournament was bowled in Dallas, marking a powerful symbol of cricket’s arrival in the United States, according to The AI Journal. Whether that arrival proves permanent or temporary remains the sport’s defining question.

This story was aggregated by AI from several news reports and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk.