‘US has second-highest number of people interested in cricket’

New Delhi:  The United States may not be taking part in the World Cup beginning on Saturday but the country has the second highest number of Facebook users interested in cricket, the social networking site said on Friday.

According to Facebook's internal data, 45 per cent of the total people interested in cricket on Facebook come from India, which comprises of 81 per sent males and 19 per cent females, the US-headquartered company said in a release.

"Based on interests shared on timelines, apps used, pages liked and other activities on Facebook, there are more than 100 million who are interested in cricket out of over 1.3 billion people who are on Facebook," it said.

"Interestingly, the US, which is not among the 14 participating countries, has the second-highest number of people interested in cricket, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh and the United Kingdom," it added.

US is now home of thousands of South Asians who might be having affinity to cricket because their countries of origin are among the leading teams of the game.

Of the 14 team participating in the World Cup, the Indian team's Facebook page is expectedly the most popular. The most discussed cricket topic was the selection of Indian team. Players with highest mentions were Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Stuart Binny.