Cricket vs Football: Popularity, Fans, History and More

A cricket vs football debate might seem frivolous to many but the traction that cricket has gained over the past few decades is mindboggling, especially with the rise of social media that helps to quantify the popularity of sports athletes in the 21st century.

For many, the similarity between the two sports ends in the fact that both cricket and football require eleven players on each team to play a match. However, the similarity goes deeper than just the superficial rules and we will discuss what unites and separates the two sports in this article.

Cricket vs Football: Origin

Before we dive into how different each sport’s origin is, one must point out the joy that both games bring to the masses. Both cricket and football have successfully brought together billions of people and various communities for a single cause for years and it continues to do that even today. It also brings forth the fact that one could get equally entertained by football’s high-octane entertainment as well as cricket’s strategic gameplay.

Origin of Football

The proof of football’s origin could be found many centuries back. Given the fact that the game primarily involves kicking a ball, it could be played by anyone and everyone regardless of gender, community and even species, for that matter. Though football has become ultra tactical and strategic with time, the initial proof of the sport being played was found during medieval times in England.

The popularity of the sport didn’t take much time to spread to nearby European countries before it expanded to European colonies of the South Americas and the French colonies in Africa. The simplicity of the game never changed and more and more people came together to play the ball-kicking game. The popularity of the sport was capitalized in the 19th century when the Football Association (English FA) came up with the rules and regulations.

Cricket’s history isn’t any less interesting either, with many even believing that it originated before football. Before bat and ball came to the forefront, the closest thing to cricket started with sticks and stones and the winner was the one who could hit the farthest. Like football, this game was simple enough to be enjoyed by the masses and soon wooden bats and balls were introduced accompanied by modern rules and regulations.

The role of the English Association in football was taken by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) at the Lord’s Stadium. Formed in 1787, the MCC played a pivotal role in setting a foundation in cricket. While modern cricket was only popular in and across the British colonized areas initially like the subcontinental countries, the Caribbean and the ones down under, it earned fans worldwide with time.

Cricket vs Football: Rules & Formats

Football: Rules

If there is a single reason why football is more loved than cricket across the globe, it is the reason that the game has seen no fundamental changes since its inception. Centuries ago, all you needed to play football was a football and it is the same today.

Apart from equipment, football’s format hasn’t seen many changes as well. It is still a 90-minute game with standard football fields and 22 players enough to be enjoyed. Yes, the number of substitutions has increased with football boots becoming futuristic every year. However, a layman won’t need to know a lot to enjoy a kickoff now and then.

Football’s rules remain the same as well. Both the teams aim to outscore each other with more goals over 90 minutes, which might get extended to 120 minutes followed by a penalty shootout if the score remains even.

Football: Cricket

Cricket, on the other hand, has demanded more and more equipment to be played. What started with a bat and ball once, needs gloves, pads, helmets different kinds of balls and bats and many other protective gear today.

Cricket has evolved extraordinarily today, so much so that an 18th-century ardent cricket fan might not even relate to a modern T20 game today. The three different international formats of cricket - Test, ODI and T20I - have their own sets of rules and gameplay. To further complicate things, the introduction of rules like DRS, umpire’s call, and DLS method would mandate a cricket fan to be quite knowledgeable today.

Players look to outscore each other in cricket as well, but in terms of runs, the minutes are replaced by overs, which provides a time limit to the game. Each format has a different number of numbers, which dictates the pace and strategy of a cricket game. While the Test is the longest format and is played with a red leather ball with a provided time of five days, ODIs and T20Is are the shorter formats that go on for a couple of hours. 

Both cricket and football require tremendous strategy, teamwork, and individual skill with tactics evolving by leaps and bounds over the last century. With time, technology has also seeped into the decision-making of both games to a large extent. What is DRS (Decision Review System) in cricket is VAR (Video Assisted Referee) in football. With tremendous emotions and money involved in both the games, getting the verdicts correct has become paramount.

Cricket, however, started as a pastime for the elite classes who could afford the equipment as well as the officials. Unlike football, cricket saw gradual love in the British colonies in Asia where India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan took to the game easily. Apart from them, Australia, New Zealand South Africa and the Caribbean region also started playing cricket. Today, however, European countries have been a regular fixture in lower-level cricket tournaments although they are far from getting the status of Test-playing nation.

Image for Celtic's players celebrating//Getty

However, if the craze must be compared, football is lightyears ahead of cricket. What cricket is to India, Brazil is football. If gully cricket is the norm on every Indian street, Brazil’s alleys are filled with kids and adults playing football. But, while no other cricketing nation could claim to be as euphoric about the game as India, Brazil has tough rivals in Germany, Spain, France and many others where the masses find an escape in the beautiful game. Recent statistics have shown that while cricket has around 2.5 billion fans around the world, football has five billion fans worldwide.

Cricket vs Football: Physical Demands

As far as fitness levels are concerned, a footballer would need higher athleticism and better recovery time to sustain at the top level, something that’s not the case with cricket. Modern football has gone the “gegenpressing” way, thus making it an extremely high-intensity mode of play. Hence, someone aspiring to be Cristiano Ronaldo would need to be agile and fast apart from honing exceptional coordination and endurance levels.

Cricket isn’t a contact sport and therefore doesn’t ask for the pace and sustained endurance that football does. Instead, cricket demands more focus and technical know-how that are evident in actions like Test batting, a bowler setting up a batter or fielding positions like slip, gully and more. 

Both cricket and football, however, demand quick thinking, cardiovascular strength, strong core and quick reflexes and have several benefits. Though cricket once saw numerous stocky individuals play the game, players like Virat Kohli have set a trend for future generations who believe that being athletic could help cricketers survive longer and push the cricket retirement age.