Hockey was more popular in India in last century than it is now. It won Olympic medals so people started calling it 'National Sport'. Then cricket's popularity blew up (it was popular, it just increased a lot).

A fun question people ask here in India is 'What is the national sport of India?'. Most people reply cricket, few 'intellectuals' say hockey, but there is no national sport.

I think that since international cricket is more popular than international hockey, non-Indians know a lot about Indian cricket than hockey.

Hmmm, I'm from South-East Europe, and the only times I remember hearing a lot about cricket is from Lewis Carroll, and from Indian news. I'm not how many people in Europe, North America, South America, Africa, China, etc. know that cricket exists. They don't care much about hockey either (the grass one), so you might be right, but only because 0.0001% is larger than 0.00001% :)

> I'm not how many people in Europe, North America, South America, Africa, China, etc. know that cricket exists.

Lots of people in the places that were part of the British Empire other than in continental North America (where for some reason it had less staying power) which includes all of those places except South America (if you count the West Indies as part of North America.) It's popular some other places, too.