John Norton, a retired police officer from Long Island, sat in a folding chair in East Meadow on Wednesday watching his grandson's Little League game. The quiet spot is less than a mile from one of the world's biggest sporting events, which will be held in just a few days, but like many in the area, Norton had only a vague idea of the details.
“I've seen the stadium from the street,” Norton said, “I don't know anything about cricket but I think it's going to be a blast up there.”
The stadium he saw, the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, seemed to have appeared overnight. Today, it sits on a corner of the 930-acre Eisenhower Park. This massive (albeit temporary) cricket stadium was built in sections over the last 100 days, like a giant building set. It will host eight matches of the Men's T20 World Cup. The international cricket tournament is expected to attract the attention of hundreds of millions of viewers around the world, yet most people in New York seem barely aware of its existence.
Matches will be held in Dallas and Lauderhill, Fla., as well as six Caribbean countries. The tournament officially opens in Dallas on Saturday with a match between the United States and Canada. The 34,000-seat stadium in East Meadow opens on Saturday with an exhibition match between India and Bangladesh.
The Indian team arrived in New York this week and trained at a facility near Hicksville, generating widespread coverage in an India dotted with cricket stadiums of all sizes.
So why hold the event in a quiet park in suburban Long Island? The goal: to create new fans like Norton, or, ideally, his grandson. The International Cricket Council, which runs the event, estimates there are already 200,000 cricketers in the United States (up from 30,000 two decades ago). Even with more than a billion fans, cricket could become even more popular around the world, says former Australian professional cricketer and ICC chief executive Geoff Allardice.
“One of the things we're trying to do is expand the sport to new markets,” he said. “New York is a big step for our sport.”
The most anticipated match of the group stage will be between India and Pakistan at East Meadow on June 9. This rivalry between the world's best cricketing nations has a bitter history on and off the pitch; like the Red Sox vs Yankees match, it is on a much larger scale and involves geopolitical tensions that span decades. The last time the two nations faced each other was in another World Cup tournament last year, which was tuned in by 323 million viewers in India alone, more than double the viewership of the last Super Bowl.
“In terms of fan base, the Indian cricket team is probably the most popular international sports team in the world,” Allardice said. “Not only is cricket the number one sport, it is a sport that inspires passion like nothing else.”
Besides the new stadium, New York fans can also watch the game live on the Oculus video screens near the World Trade Center, and Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, will host a viewing party for the India vs Pakistan match on June 9.
The ICC hopes the tournament will have the same impact on cricket that the 1994 World Cup had on soccer in the United States: shattering the dominance once held by baseball, basketball, football and hockey.
Cricket, which originated in England, has a long history in New York: the Staten Island Cricket Club will celebrate its 152nd anniversary in July, but the first international cricket match was played 30 years earlier, on September 24, 1844, in Manhattan, between the United States and Canada.
Traditional cricket matches are notoriously long, even with tea breaks. Matches last most of the day, with international matches lasting five days. But about 20 years ago, a new format called Twenty20 (or T20 for short) was invented, which limited the game time to about three hours, and it has skyrocketed in popularity around the world.
The United States has had many leagues and clubs over the past few decades, and last year saw the launch of a professional league, Major League Cricket. The New York team won the championship, but for now they are playing in Texas and hope to build a permanent stadium in the New York area.
For the World Cup, the ICC initially proposed to locate the venue at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, the cricket capital of the New York region. However, local opposition, including from cricketers who did not want to lose their playing field during construction and matches, forced the ICC to look for another venue. After Eisenhower Park was selected in November and word of the decision reached the Indian media, several people toured the site and found the field to be small and dilapidated.
“They were appalled,” said venue development director Don Lockerbie, who grew up near Stony Brook, Long Island. “They had no idea what we were building here.”
The field, with a rectangular pitch in the middle, was made from a special grass sourced in Florida. The seating is borrowed from that recently used in Las Vegas for a Formula One race and a professional golf event. After the final match is played at East Meadow on June 12, the stadium will be dismantled and the parts shipped back to Las Vegas for another golf event, and Eisenhower Park will return to normal, leaving behind a world-class cricket field.
Mr Norton watched his grandson's baseball game and wished the cricket team well in the tournament, but said he had no plans to attend.
“I barely get to go to a Yankees game,” he said.
Victor Mather contributed reporting.
