Cricket is even more accessible: you need a bat (which could be a piece of wood), but you don't need space. You can compress the game to play in a 1.5m wide alleyway between two buildings.

I think this is why it became so popular in India etc.

Soccer is still more accessible. You don't even need a ball. As a kid, you'll find yourself kicking around a crushed coke can with friends and trying to score.

Cricket also does not require a lot of running and because the defense controls the ball, it fills a lot of time at a slow pace.

Like Baseball, a Sunday afternoon game has a low risk of an injury that prevents work on Monday.

there is also a ton of grass-roots football in India, with kids kicking a ball around wherever there is a space for it. that doesn't translate to having good national teams simply because there is not much funding to develop the game, unlike with cricket.