How Brazil Became Standard Bearer For Cricket Global Growth Spin

silverguide.site –

In the south-east of Brazil, about 250km due north of São Paulo, lies the town of Poços de Caldas, home to about 150,000 people and remarkable for a few reasons: its thermal baths, its magmatic rock structure – the town is home to Brazil’s first uranium ore concentration plant – and its love of cricket.

“You walk down the street and you have people with English shirts, with Australian shirts, people with Test match names and numbers on their white polos,” says Roberta Moretti Avery. “You walk around Poços de Caldas, you feel like you’re in a foreign country with how much cricket stuff is walking around.”

The arrival of cricket in Poços de Caldas was down to pure chance. In 2000 Matt Featherstone, once of Kent – he played six List A games for them – met and fell in love with a Brazilian woman who was studying in London, and she convinced him to try life in her home town. He brought cricket with him. A few years later Moretti Avery also spent time in England. “I actually was there when the 2005 Ashes were happening and I saw it on TV,” she says.

“I thought: ‘Oh my god this is the most boring game ever created.’” Then she met an Englishman and convinced him to move to her hometown. By pure coincidence, both Brazilians were from Poços de Caldas.

Once back in Brazil, Moretti Avery’s husband convinced her to give the game a go. She found she enjoyed it, in time became captain of the national team, and is now president of the Brazilian Cricket Confederation (BCC). From having no organised cricket before Featherstone turned up, the region alone last year had 7,000 people under the age of 30, most under 17, playing it regularly – the town’s mayor has suggested that more people play cricket there than football – and 12,000 across Brazil. The first cricket programme was in an orphanage, and in Brazil it is mainly a game for the underprivileged – hence occasional donations of kit, and people wandering around in England shirts.

The BCC continues to spread the word: across 2023 it ran cricket presentations, competitions and festivals for 44,000 people; in 2024 for 80,000; last year for 100,000, most of them women and girls. It has centrally contracted international teams, most players native Brazilians. It produces its own cricket bats. And about 12,000km away, at the Dubai headquarters of the International Cricket Council (ICC), it is causing some excitement.

“It depends on whether you look at it through a performance lens or a participation lens, but countries that are really exciting us at the moment are Brazil in the Americas region and Nigeria in Africa,” says Will Glenwright, the ICC’s head of global development. “We do an annual census that records all the participation data from all our 98 associate members, and the game’s growing like it’s never grown before.

“We had 24% year-on-year growth in the last reporting period. Countries like Nigeria and Brazil are driving a lot of that growth. Japan’s very exciting, a country with a strong bat-and-ball heritage and actually a very strong cricket heritage, which they’re starting to realise now. And in Europe, countries like Germany and Italy. There’s pockets of energy everywhere.”

The just-completed men’s T20 World Cup was seen at ICC HQ as a potential driver of global interest. “We wanted to leverage the fact that we had this amazing set of circumstances where you have a World Cup in India, India defending champions, all those storylines that were going to make it a compelling event beyond what it would be anyway,” says Finn Bradshaw, the ICC’s head of digital. “To try and reach people who maybe had a passing interest in cricket and grow their interest in the game. We did a few things to achieve that, and probably No 1 was creating content in languages other than English.”

It may seem obvious, given that Pakistan is one of the sport’s traditional giants and there are around 250m people who speak the language, but for the first time the ICC broadcast games in Urdu. The tournament was broadcast in Nepal for the first time, with Nepali commentary. Given strong recent growth in interest in Japan and Indonesia, select high-profile matches were broadcast online in Japanese and Bahasa. The ICC also used AI to produce highlights packages in Arabic and Portuguese. “Maybe one day we can do it in 200 languages at once,” says Bradshaw.

The India v Pakistan game was shown on YouTube in territories without contracted broadcasters; about 30,000 people watched the English feed, and about 20,000 people watched in Japanese. “That was multiples of what we were expecting to see,” Bradshaw says. “And it wasn’t like they were just getting served it by the algorithm and going away – it’s people who were staying. That genuinely feels to us like it came from nowhere in the last couple of years.”

That cricket is growing internationally can be seen from the number of associate member nations – the ICC receives between five and 10 applications each year and tends to admit a couple. Zambia and East Timor joined last year. Its imminent Olympic return is already driving interest. But is the ICC looking for future World Cup competitors, for people who might play socially, or just for monetisable eyeballs for online content?

“It’s all of that, all three of those,” says Glenwright. “We believe cricket is the greatest sport on earth and we want more people to experience that game, either as a participant or as a fan. This has been driven by an aspiration to make cricket more significant in the global sporting landscape.

“That includes how we can make awareness of the game greater in the big sports economies of the world, like Brazil, China and Japan. And as the awareness of the game grows in those countries, our job is to ensure that those who watch the game and decide they want to play it have a pathway.”

In Brazil, for example, they have been helping local administrators for two decades. “The guidance we get from the ICC on how to grow cricket sustainably, and the funding we get once we take these steps, has been of massive importance to us,” Moretti Avery says.

In pure digital engagement, compared with the period during the last T20 World Cup in 2024, the ICC website received an increase of 42% in traffic from the Netherlands, of 52% in South Africa – where there has been a massive surge of interest over the past couple of years – of 72% in Italy, 145% in Japan, 600% in Zimbabwe. “We’re really ambitious and optimistic about how we can use this event as a launching pad to sustain the growth and the fandom and the excitement in those countries,” Bradshaw says.

So far it seems to be working. “I’ve been getting calls from around the country, people saying, ‘Hey, I’m watching cricket!’,” says Moretti Avery. “Now the kids in the community believe they are part of something bigger. Because they’re not only seeing the big countries, they see smaller countries. They feel they are part of this bigger community. Brazilians are starting to understand that cricket is also their sport, and this is a massive step for us.”

T20 World Cup writer awards

Bowler of the tournament: Jasprit Bumrah (India)
It was always going to be him. Bumrah ended the tournament its top wicket-taker (albeit level with Varun Chakravarthy, who by general consensus had a hugely disappointing tournament, while they both only took one more than the USA’s Shadley van Schalkwyk and bowled around twice as many deliveries). Of those who played more than three games only Mohammad Mohsin, also of the USA, had a better economy rate. But if Bumrah had done nothing all tournament except decide a lunatic semi-final by rocking up for the 18th over of England’s run chase and conceding only six, or nothing except bowl those yorkers in the final, he’d still have deserved it.

Best batter: Brian Bennett (Zimbabwe)
Sanju Samson was the official player of the tournament, and it was hard to argue after he played a hat-trick of phenomenal innings in the most crucial matches. But they were India’s most crucial matches; Zimbabwe’s were in the group stage, during which Bennett – ludicrously – was not out. For an opener to go the entire group stage unbeaten is inexplicable and astonishing, and they weren’t just meaningless, selfish innings either – each one helped his team to victory, scores of 48, 64 and 63 steering Zimbabwe to unexpected qualification for the Super 8s, where he scored a bonus unbeaten 97 against India.

Best match: South Africa v Afghanistan
The point where this became an irrefutable classic was not when the two teams finished tied to push the game into a super over, nor when the teams couldn’t be split in that and had to play a second. It was in the final moments of the second super over: South Africa had scored a surely decisive 23 off theirs, then Keshav Maharaj started with a dot and a wicket. Afghanistan needed four sixes. And then Rahmanullah Gurbaz lifted the next down the ground, the one after that over long-on, the next over midwicket. It was happening. Maharaj, brain surely melting as was everyone else’s, fired the next down leg. It really was happening. Then Gurbaz picked out point. It didn’t happen. But wow, what a ride.

Catch of the tournament: Pathum Nissanka (v Australia, group stage)
There was, as ever in these things, a splendid array of phenomenal catches and general fielding athleticism and mastery across the tournament. The question is, does context add to a catch – in which case one of Axar Patel’s efforts against England in the semi-finals would probably have to get the nod – or should this be entirely down the one instant, man versus ball. And, well, you know the answer already. A phenomenal grab, and hugely consequential: Glenn Maxwell had scored 22 off 15 and there were four overs of potential carnage to come; without him Australia scored only 21 runs in them; had he seen out the innings their total would have been much higher than 181, the momentum with them at the innings break. Instead Sri Lanka cantered to their target, won by eight wickets, and Australia were all but out. Special mention for Daryl Mitchell and Mark Chapman, whose dismissal of Alishan Sharafu of the UAE wins the relay catch of the tournament award.

Drop of the tournament: Usman Tariq (v England, Super 8s)
Harry Brook’s drop of Samson in the semi-finals was surely the most consequential, but while that chance was easy enough there is simply no reason why anyone should be putting down the one Pakistan’s Tariq flubbed against England. Jacob Bethell, the beneficiary, actually laughed as the ball landed, though he couldn’t make the most of his lifeline.

Quote of the week

My personal philosophy is that milestones don’t matter. It’s the trophies that matter. For too long in Indian cricket we’ve spoken about milestones. And I hope, for as long as I’m here, you won’t talk about milestones. You see the last three games, what Sanju did – imagine if he would have been playing for a milestone, probably he wouldn’t have got to 50. This is for your guys [in the media] as well, stop celebrating milestones. It’s very difficult to change that mindset. This is important, because the bigger purpose of team sport is winning trophies, not scoring individual runs. It has never mattered to me, and it will never matter to me. Everyone in that dressing room is putting the team ahead of their own self, and that is the reason why we could achieve something special like this” – Gautam Gambhir during an extraordinary, 40-minute post-final press conference, which ended at 1.20am, packed with Gambhir in particular (Suryakumar Yadav was also there) saying any number of tremendously quotable things, and was followed by a couple more players arriving for another press conference. It was, by that point, past the Spin’s bedtime.

Memory lane

Home wins in major cricket tournaments are puzzlingly unusual, given the advantage playing at home generally conveys – away teams have won 40.9% of T20s, 39.3% of ODIs and 27% of Tests. Until Sunday the T20 World Cup had never been won by the hosts, the Champions Trophy has still not (another record India will want to end, when they host the next one in 2029), and it took until 2011 and the 10th 50-over World Cup for a home team to win that (Sri Lanka, co-hosts of the sixth, won the tournament but the final was in Pakistan), at which point three did it in a row.

The team to break that duck was also India, and Gambhir, coach this time, scored 97 in the final. “Look, I can’t ask for more,” he said when asked on Sunday night for his memories of that game. “I played one World Cup at home and we ended up winning that. I was very fortunate to be part of the winning World Cup team. And then first time at home as a coach, we win that as well.” Sure, not a great answer, but it was late.

Still want more?

Under the hammer: Matt Hughes explains how the new-look Hundred auction works.

Simon was in Ahmedabad to witness India’s run onslaught en route to retaining the T20 World Cup, while he also explains why England still have reasons to be cheerful about their T20 World Cup campaign.

And Geoff Lemon reflects on Alyssa Healy’s swansong and what it said about the scant opportunities for women to play Test cricket.