Opinion: Top Non Commonwealth cricket playing countries…

The following are the top non commonwealth countries in the world where cricket is not played predominantly by recent immigrants i.e. the number of locals playing the game is more than 20%

Indonesia (12161)
Italy (5668)
Thailand (5656)
Netherlands (5380)
Japan (4182)
Argentina (3925)
Denmark (3784)
Chile (2045)

Indonesia values are a little skewed due to the fact that they have more than 11000 kids in junior involvement activities.

To me…. at least those that have a decent senior outfit i.e. Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, Argentina and Japan etc. are pretty important countries, because they take the game outside of the commonwealth club. ICC should perhaps invest a little bit more in these countries to help them raise their standard if they are willing. Also Argentina gives gives cricket a good presence in South America.

For the purpose of this list, I have delisted any country that has a colonial past, or commonwealth past. Hence Ireland could not make this list, though they are not part of the commonwealth today. UAE, USA, France, Kuwait, Bahrain etc all showed up on the list, but I did not include them because they do not have local players.