I can tell you down to the exact date when soccer “arrived” in America, at least for me: Sunday, December 7, 2003. Not a ball was kicked in America that day, but in the North West of England, Arsenal visited Manchester United for the featured English soccer noon Sunday kickoff. The timing meant that the game took place at 6am in Minneapolis; I taped the match – you could still physically tape things in those days – and planned to watch it after working the early shift. It was the biggest match of what was still a young season.

In order to keep the suspense, I had to avoid seeing the result all morning, which in those days only meant staying off websites devoted to English soccer. Or so I thought. Even now, I can still remember the feeling of betrayal when I clicked over to ESPN.com and saw, under the “Headlines” section, the fateful line that began: “Manchester United 2-0 Arsenal.”

ESPN.com had ruined my plan. The biggest American sports website was no longer a safe haven to avoid English soccer news. And for me, this rang as an official announcement: Soccer, even a result from a league on the other side of the pond, was news ESPN thought we Americans wanted to know.

Monday, England completed a victory in the first Test against India, bowling out the visitors with 75 minutes or so to spare on the fifth day at Lord’s. And when the match was over, I clicked over to ESPN.com, and there below the space for Rick Reilly’s column, was a small box labeled “CRICKET,” and below a small photo of Stuart Broad celebrating, the tagline: “England sent a strong message to India, winning at Lord’s by 196 runs in a complete effort.”

United and Arsenal in 2003 was a matchup between the two premier teams in the English league. England and India in 2011 is a matchup between the two premier Test sides in world cricket. But even so, this wasn’t the Cricket World Cup final, and it wasn’t even a match in one of the shorter formats that are supposed to be all that attention-deficit America is supposed to be able to tolerate.

Cricket, even a Test result from England, is news ESPN thinks Americans want to know.

Don’t look now, but ESPN is your television (and online television) home for the next four years of international tournaments, including the 2015 World Cup. Maybe it’ll fall in with Australian Rules football and rugby and other ESPN3.com-only sports, but those sports, to my knowledge, have seldom if ever received any kind of front-page treatment. It’s a short headline and a small picture on the front page, but clearly, to ESPN, cricket news in America is a real thing.