Canada’s first ever national sport is back – and you won’t believe what it is
Amanpreet Kaur, Contributor
With 2.5 billion fans around the world, cricket is the second-most popular sport on the planet—beat only by soccer as per the number by Sports for Business website . It is also known as “the gentleman’s game”, a name that ingrains the spirit of the game with mutual respect, sportsmanship, and high moral conduct which is well explained by Moonshot Blog. With the International Cricket Council (ICC) T20 World Cup right around the corner in February 2026 and the sport sweeping Canada, here’s everything you need to know about one of the oldest “bat and ball” games in human sporting history.
Origin story
The ICC website states the origin of cricket with it being believed to have originated during Saxon or Norman times in South-east England with the first record of the game being played in 1611. It was derived from bowls, when a batsman tried to stop and diverge the ball from hitting the target.
In the 17th century, cricket developed into Village Cricket and became a leading sport in London and the south-eastern counties of England, with the first women’s match being played in Surrey.
The Laws of Cricket were written in 1744 and amended in 1774 to have standardized rules for the game. Colonists brought Cricket to North America, West Indies, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the first international cricket match was played between the USA and Canada in 1844.
How it’s played
The International Cricket Council (ICC) is the governing body of Cricket which was established in 1909 by the Imperial Cricket Conference. There are 104 member countries in five continents which involves assisting 92 Assistive Members to grow and improve the sport and its standards as per the recent data from ICC website.
Cricket is divided into three main categories – test cricket, one-day international matches (ODI) and Twenty20 matches (T20). In both cases, the game starts with a coin toss where the winning team chooses to bat or bowl/field first. The team that bats first has to score the highest possible number of runs in the given number of overs, or sets of six legal balls bowled, until they accumulate 10 wickets, which can be likened to outs in baseball. After that, the second team must beat the runs scored by the first team within the same number of wickets to win the game.
The difference comes in the number of overs each team is allowed to bowl, with ODIs restricting the bowl count to 50 and T20s being limited to 20 overs.
Test cricket is the most traditional form of the sport, spreading matches over five consecutive days and having no restrictions on the number of overs played. Instead, each team gets two chances to bat, with the matches only ending after the five days have expired or after the team that bats last exceeds their opposition’s point total. Innings only end when team captains forfeit the rest of the inning, which they may do if they are confident in their point total, or when every batter on the batting team is declared out.
Cricket in Canada
Cricket is experiencing a serious surge in Canada. In fact, it could even be labelled a resurgence, and a CBC article highlighted that Prime Minister John A. MacDonald declared cricket Canada’s first-ever national sport. Canada was victorious in the first international match, as they defeated the US in September of 1884 in front of an audience of over five thousand people.
Today, around 4 million people actively engage with the game annually in the country, shows a study by Sponsorpulse. Some have attributed that growth to the fast-growing population of South Asian people in Canada, which was recorded at over 2.5 million in 2021 by Statistics Canada and represents arguably the most cricket-loving demographics in the world.
Contemporary cricket column
ICC events like the Women’s World Cup, Men’s Champion Trophy and the final of the World Test Championship dominated 2025 and is set to build on that when the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup rolls around in 2026, hosted in India and Sri Lanka.
In June, South Africa defeated Australia in the finals of the World Test Championship for their first major cricket title, while India won the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy by remaining undefeated in the tournament and beating New Zealand in the final.
In November, India took their first-ever ICC Women’s ODI World Cup trophy by defeating South Africa in the final.
Outside of national-team cricket, the most well-known cricket league is the Indian Premier League (IPL), which started in 2008 and in 18 seasons, it has generated huge revenue and viewership. In North America, Major League Cricket (MLC) is growing rapidly and rivals many other well-established leagues in per-game payouts for their most valuable players—including the IPL.
The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup begins in February 2026, but there are plenty of tournaments, leagues and matches to watch until then. Additionally, the City of Calgary finished its master plans for the Northeast Athletic Complex in 2024, which, according to the project’s website, “will be one of Calgary’s largest athletic parks” and feature indoor and outdoor cricket facilities intended to host tournaments and provide year-round recreational cricket for Calgarians.
