In 1995, the Philadelphia International Cricket Festival (PICF) was started to promote the sport in Philadelphia and beyond. This year, the event starting on May 4 and running through May 7 will be celebrating its 28th year and has now become the preeminent amateur cricketing event in the country. 

This year’s festival will feature more than 200 players and two international teams. This sporting occasion is hosted by five of Philadelphia’s premiere cricket grounds: The Philadelphia Cricket Club, The British Officers' Cricket Club, Germantown Cricket Club, Merion Cricket Club, and Haverford College.

Philadelphia figures prominently in the history of cricket in North America. The Philadelphia Cricket Club, founded in 1854, is one of the oldest clubs in the country, according to their website. In its glory days, Philadelphia had more than 100 cricket clubs scattered around the city.  

The game of cricket in North America dates all the way back to pre-Revolutionary War times. The first public report of a cricket match in North America was in 1751, when the New York Gazette and the Weekly Post Boy published an account of a match between two teams from the New York City region. 

By about 1870 baseball in the United States had surpassed cricket and the game petered out as the pace of life became too much to dedicate to the game. Baseball was faster, easier to learn, and the duration of the games much shorter. 

As improbable as it may seem, cricket is making a comeback in the U.S. in part due to the influx of immigrants from cricket-loving regions like India, Pakistan and the Caribbean. Cricket leagues are currently springing up all over the United States in places that include Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Florida, California, Colorado, Canada, Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio. There has even been the development of Major League Cricket in the United States with twenty-six teams participating in 200 matches. 

Seventeen teams are expected to play in this year’s Philadelphia International Cricket Festival, coming from as nearby as Germantown and Philadelphia, and Merion, and as far away as Canada and the United Kingdom. 

Since its inception, PICF has promoted the sport of cricket in Philadelphia and beyond via charitable donations. This year one of the causes the PICF will be supporting is the Sierra Leone Cricket Association. Equipment donated by festival participants will be given to their fledgling program to further Sierra Leone’s international sporting opportunities. 

For more information about the Philadelphia Cricket Festival, visit www.cricketfestival.com