India, Sept. 19 -- At first glance, China is an improbable frontier for cricket. Their men sit 92nd in the T20I rankings and their women 36th, while cricket remains peripheral in a sporting culture dominated by disciplines with far deeper institutional roots and much larger domestic audiences.

Yet for the International Cricket Council, that very absence is part of the attraction. China is being approached not merely as a place where more players might eventually emerge, but as a vast consumer market in which cricket can attempt something considerably more difficult: create sustained demand where almost none exists today.

The logic begins with an awkward truth about cricket's prosperity. The sport commands more than a billion followers, ...