America’s first sport

James Astill, The Economist’s Washington correspondent, argues that Americans might still be playing cricket, had it not been for the civil war

By James Astill

When the removal van parked outside our new home in Maryland last summer, my six-year-old son and I grabbed bat, ball and stumps and ran. On my sixth foreign posting, I found packing and unpacking more tedious than ever; my son had already worked out where the practice pitch should be. There was a patch of common ground next to the house – the meadow, we called it – which was flat and grassy enough for cricket.

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