Thanks to a partner who was 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 lights. The 7,000-seat stadium is in Grand Prairie, not far from where the Cowboys — an American team, remember — play in front of more than 90,000 spectators eight or nine times each fall under a sliding roof with a giant video board 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 saw 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 said the investors, who have committed $120 million to the company, are the most important thing. 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 against Washington, the South African was swamped with asking for autosin the sport in 2028, when the Games will be held in Los Angeles.
All of a sudden we have a five-year program to grow the sport,» Gale said. A big part of what we’re trying to do is to strengthen the U.S. national team. Another part of the development plan is to strengthen the grassroots, which Mehta said will take time. Youth and recreational leagues will be critical to making the U.S. more competitive internationally.
And while Houston has a strong enough cricketing presence to host training camps leading up to Major League Cricket.r now worried about it for his debut — but it wasn’t necessary. The fans were quick to throw balls back, which makes sense given Mehta’s words on marketing. The debut target was former compatriots from South Asia and the Caribbean, as well as Australia and New Zealand.
This is another part of the short-term plan.
I would like these fans to quickly bring their friends, relatives, associates, colleagues to the game and give them a taste of it, Mehta said. But it’s okay if it takes another year. And next year we’ll be doing general marketing, trying to reach the bulk of American sports fans. Those fans were few and far between in the early days of the tournament, including Dan Strick. The Dallas area resident, who became addicted to cricket on television about a year ago, brought his son to the match.
Judging by the p