Thanks to a partner happy to turn a fading minor league baseball stadium into one of the few legal cricket fields in the country, the league has launched in Texas, known for its Friday night high school soccer battles. The 7,000-seat stadium is in Grand Prairie, not far from where the Cowboys — an American team, mind you — play in front of more than 90,000 spectators eight or nine times each fall under a sliding roof with a giant video scoreboard hanging over the field.
Sometimes I think we’re crazy,» tournament director Justin Gil said. We’re in downtown Dallas and we have a cricket field. I’ve seen this vision. I was very excited. I got goosebumps when I first walked in here. I thought: We can do this. As with many things, it’s all about money, and co-founder Samir Mehta says the investors who have committed $120 million to the company are not the only ones who have committed to the project. Most of the money comes from India, where the Indian Premier League hosts arguably the best T20 cricket, a three-hour version most similar to baseball. Three IPL owners help run American teams.
With a salary cap competitive with similar T20 tournaments around the world, Major League Cricket organizers got most of the big-name players they were after, including Texas Super Kings captain Faf du Plessis.
During the match vs.