Cricket in the Digital Collections

If you live in the United States you probably think that cricket is a sport that's played...elsewhere. And it's true that cricket is far more popular in other parts of the world like South Asia, the Caribbean, Australia, and England. But the sport's profile here is poised to rise with the unexpected and thrilling win of the U.S. team against powerhouse Pakistan in the T20 World Cup last week.

Cricket's origins are in England and date back to at least the 16th century. In America, there are written reports of cricket being played in the early 1700s and by the time of the Civil War it had become the most popular sport in the country—only to be soon supplanted by a simpler ball and bat sport: baseball. Time will tell if cricket can regain its standing in the United States. In the meantime, you can go back in time to see hundreds of cricket-related images in The New York Public Library's Digital Collections, a sampling of which is below.

NYPL's Digital Collections is a free database of nearly one million items including prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, video, and more. What will you discover?