during the American Revolution. John Adams was recorded as saying in Congress that if leaders of cricket clubs could be called "presidents", there was no reason why the leader of the new nation could not be called the same. In 1844, the United States participated in the first international cricket match. This was played against Canada at the St George's Cricket Club Ground, Bloomingdale Park, New York. This first international sporting event was attended by 20,000 people and established the longest international sporting rivalry in the modern era. Wagers of around $120,000 were placed on the outcome of the match. This is equivalent to around $1.5 million in 2007. Sides from England toured North America (taking in both the US and Canada) following the English cricket seasons of 1859, 1868 and 1872. These were organized as purely commercial ventures. Most of the matches of these early touring teams were played "against odds", that is to say the home team was permitted to have more than eleven players (usually twenty-two) in order to make a more even contest. Decline In spite of cricket's popularity in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the game was supplanted by baseball in the 1850s and 1860s. As interest in baseball rose, the rules of that game were changed slightly to increase its popularity. For example, easily manufactured round bats were introduced to contrast the flat bats of cricket. Another reason for cricket's decline in popularity may be that in the late 19th century American cricket remained an amateur sport reserved for the wealthy while England and Australia were developing a professional version of the game. As cricket standards improved with professionalism elsewhere in the world many North American cricket clubs stayed stubbornly elitist. Clubs such as Philadelphia CC and Merion abandoned cricket and converted their facilities to other sports. Some city cricket clubs unknowingly contributed to their own demise by sponsoring auxiliary baseball teams. By 1900, baseball was dominant numerically and culturally in the US. In addition, when the first international body for the sport, the Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC) was formed in 1909, membership was restricted to countries in the British Empire. This undercut the popularity of cricket outside the empire and reduced momentum to professionalize cricket in the US. Whether a more open ICC would have maintained or increased the momentum remains an open question, however. Regardless of its cause, the game did