The History of Cricket in Oregon, 1870s-1920s

Abstract

Author Craig Owen Jones writes “the failure of American Cricket to flourish in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is the Rorschach inkblot test for sports historians — each sees in the failure whatever they wish to see.” In this research article, explores the history of cricket in Oregon, and especially the Portland Cricket Club, “with an emphasis on cricket clubs' sociological and demographic makeup.” The earliest reference of cricket in Oregon are in newspaper reports on cricket games being played in Portland in 1873. By the late 1870s, cricket had expanded beyond Portland to areas as far apart as Albany, Astoria, and Corvallis. Jones ultimately concludes that cricket's failure to establish in Oregon was due to major cricket clubs taking on an exclusionary membership of mainly upper-class players, and failed to establish a broader appeal. Although cricket never took off in Oregon, Jones emphasizes that “it nonetheless played a persistent, if small, role in sporting life for almost three quarters of a century.”