I'd like to know what - objectively - do you find bad with it?
I went to a baseball game once (Marlins vs somebody), and sat thru a couple of hours of play, where nothing happened - no runs were scored by either side, and the innings kept turning over, and that's it. I was dead bored. I was told it was an especially bad game from both sides, but I can't imagine going to (or watching on TV) another baseball game. I mean, I understand and appreciate great soccer matches that end scoreless for either side. But baseball seems to revel in rules that make for boring games.
So, back to cricket - I can empathize if you don't like the 5 day game. I love watching that, but it's not for everyone. But with the "one-day" game (which takes around 7/8 hours to complete) or the Twenty-20 game (that takes around 2/3 hours to complete it's not a matter of length of time. So what's it?
That same argument could be made for soccer where both teams can go scoreless for an entire game, yet soccer is still a superior sport. It is simple - no hands, two goals, one ball. It is a fluid sport. This is the main argument against football I hear from people. Too much stoppage of play, and I'll give them that.
But with cricket? It wreaks of a game developed when people were so bloody bored they needed to make it terribly complex and last a long time, to give them something to do. It's like a game that regrettably lasted longer than it should have. As you well know, it is pretty much only ex-British colonies or related countries that still play the game on a serious level. There is a good reason for that.
The fact that the game has had other versions developed in order to reduce the game duration to something reasonable is a testament to how ridiculously long it was in the first place. The game can't be explained so easily. It's like 3x more complicated than baseball. Instead of just trying to get the ball past, there is the wicket to contend with as well. Runs are just one at a time? Wrong, you can get 4 or 6 as well. I mean, what the hell?
This speaks volumes: "Cricket never caught on in Canada, despite efforts by an imperial-minded elite to promote the game as a way of identifying with the British Empire. Canada, unlike Australia and the West Indies, witnessed a continual decline in the popularity of the game during 18601960. Linked to upper class British-Canadian elites, the game never became popular with the general public. In the summer season it had to compete with baseball. During the First World War, Canadian units stationed in Britain played baseball, not cricket."
Of course it didn't catch on.