AHC: Switch the fates of Cricket and Baseball

Challenge: Have Baseball be huge in the Commonwealth, while have Cricket be huge in the USA, Latin America, and Japan.

Honestly, I think it's damn near impossible. You might be able to get Rounders become more popular than Cricket in Britain and the Commonwealth (though it's difficult for many reasons relating to Cricket's early patronage in the upper classes and a perception in at least some areas and periods of rounders as a 'girl's sport'), but for that to evolve into something recognisable as modern Baseball is highly unlikely.
 
Honestly, I think it's damn near impossible. You might be able to get Rounders become more popular than Cricket in Britain and the Commonwealth (though it's difficult for many reasons relating to Cricket's early patronage in the upper classes and a perception in at least some areas and periods of rounders as a 'girl's sport'), but for that to evolve into something recognisable as modern Baseball is highly unlikely.

As I understand it, Rounders is actually a fairly late development of earlier bat-and-ball games, including one version actually called "Base Ball". But it's true that early baseball-like games had the stigma of being played by children and women, as opposed to Cricket which was played by adult men. So the PoD must be fairly early, probably before 1700, by which time Cricket had already become known as a high-status game played by adults.

So one possibility would be for Base Ball to be adopted by the Roundhead armies during the English Civil War of the 1640s, much like Baseball was played (and popularized) by the Union armies in the American Civil War of the 1860s. That might be early enough that Base Ball could assume the social position that Cricket did in OTL.
 
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