Pro Cricket

Pro Cricket

Logo of Pro Cricket
Sport	Cricket
Founded	2004
Ceased	2004
Motto	Fast n' Furious Global Action
No. of teams	8
Country	United States
Last champion(s)	San Francisco Freedom

Pro Cricket was a professional cricket league in the United States. It was operated by American Pro Cricket LLC (APC), a private company independent of the ICC and the USACA.

The league was formed in 2004 as one of several independent efforts by different organizations to develop and promote cricket in the United States. APC originally announced that it was fully funded for at least three years of competition, but the league struggled through in its initial season due to poor attendance. Also, a deal to televise games on Dish Network apparently fell through. [1] The league quietly expired after the 2004 season.

The format of the games were 20 overs a side, similar to Twenty20 cricket. However, there were two major changes from the rules of cricket used elsewhere:

Additionally, the league used a "designated hitter" rule, in which teams consist of 12 players, 11 of whom field and 11 of whom bat. This was similar to such rules existing in some domestic List A cricket competitions. All of these changes were designed to shorten the game and produce more aggressive batting, which the league administrators believed would help make the sport more appealing to the US public.

Each team was allowed a limited roster of global players from professional cricket teams outside the U.S. The ICC however ruled that because Pro Cricket was not organised by the USACA, contracted players from ICC Test nations could not be released from their contracts to play in Pro Cricket matches. However, several notable players without contracts, such as Ajay Jadeja, Daren Ganga, Mervyn Dillon, and Rahul Sanghvi took part in the competition.

Although cricket had a strong following in the U.S. up to the mid-19th century, its popularity dwindled with the rise of baseball, and it remained an almost unknown sport throughout the 20th century. The U.S. was one of the first nations to become an Associate Member of the ICC, in 1965, but growth of the game there languished until the late 1990s, when the ICC focused development efforts on the country. Progress since has been slow but steady, and many hoped that Pro Cricket would prove to be a turning point in the popularity of the sport in the U.S. As events unfolded, it became clear that this was not to be.