For the first time on June 9, the United States will host one of the most watched sporting contests in the world.
In Long Island, New York, India will play Pakistan in the group stages of the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) T20 World Cup.
With geopolitical tensions heightening the rivalry among the two most supported cricketing nations, the game is expected to be watched by more than 400million people. For context, 2024’s Super Bowl LVIII between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs attracted around 125million viewers.
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Considering the eyes of the sporting world will be on New York this weekend, why is cricket’s biggest spectacle — a relatively unknown sport in North America — being played in Long Island? Oh, and the U.S. defeated one of these cricketing powerhouses yesterday — their victory over Pakistan was one of the biggest upsets in the history of the game.
Let The Athletic explain…
Since its inception in the early 2000s, T20 has increasingly become the sport’s most popular and, for the players, most lucrative format. It is the shortest form, with each team batting for 20 overs — an over constitutes six balls from the same bowler from the fielding side — with a game tending to last around three hours. It is a format that reflects modern society, intended to make cricket more action-packed and capture the attention of a broader audience.
Each team faces 120 balls and whoever gets the highest number of runs in that allocated period wins. Historically, cricket has been a long-form sport, with Test matches lasting up to five days, with no guarantee of a winner at the end of that, and one-day cricket a 50-over-per-team game.
The T20 World Cup has generally been held every two years since its first edition in 2007. The tournament taking place now is the first to consist of 20 nations, with teams divided into four groups of five. The top two sides in each group qualify for the ‘Super Eights’ — another group stage, with the top two from each four-team group advancing. Then it is the semi-finals, which will leave two sides, finally, battling it out for the trophy.
India’s contest with Pakistan will be the second of their three group games. It comes after Pakistan were shocked by the U.S. in a dramatic victory on Thursday.
Well, it is not entirely all in the States. The World Cup is being co-hosted with the West Indies — a group of 13 Caribbean nations that compete under one umbrella. In total, the U.S. will host 16 matches, played in Grand Prairie, Texas; Lauderhill, Florida; and East Meadow, New York. However, most games, including the semi-finals and final, will be played in the West Indies.
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Fundamentally, the purpose of the U.S. hosting T20 World Cup fixtures is to drive cricket’s growth in the country. Profits raised from the matches played in New York will be invested into increasing the awareness of the sport.
Following in the footsteps of other cricketing nations, the U.S. started its own franchise league in 2023. The first season of Major League Cricket (MLC) took place over three weeks in North Carolina and Texas, with six teams representing U.S. cities entering.
This year’s tournament will begin just four days after the T20 World Cup final and has attracted several of the game’s biggest stars. Australian captain Pat Cummins has recently signed a four-year deal to play for the San Francisco Unicorns, while other high-profile players competing include Bangladesh’s Shakib Al Hasan and South Africa’s David Miller. The plan is to expand the MLC to 10 teams.
Cricket has been added to the Olympics from 2028, when Los Angeles is hosting. This was the first major U.S. city considered by the ICC to host the World Cup and in December 2022, planned to build a 25,000-seater stadium in California. Ultimately, it was decided that due to west coast timings, 12 and a half hours behind India, the new financial powerhouse of the game, LA could not be considered a host city due to the significant time difference.
In five years since ‘USA Cricket’ was set up, it has run into its fair share of problems. First, it had few to no full-time staff, instead relying on volunteers and temporary contractors.
Regardless, comprised of American-born citizens and players from other nations who have become eligible, the U.S. team has shown marked progress — even if their Australian head coach, Stuart Law, only arrived in April and the team have played just 12 matches in nearly three years.
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Before the competition started, the U.S. hammered Canada 4-0 and then beat Bangladesh 2-1 in a bilateral series. In their most famous victory to date, they then defied the odds once more by beating Pakistan in their second World Cup game.
It has been complicated.
In short, the U.S. has no experience — or knowledge — in hosting this scale of cricketing event. Every step has fallen into a quagmire of problems, earning several slaps on the wrists from the ICC, which imposed multiple sanctions, with funding briefly suspended in 2022. Remarkably, USA Cricket has no CEO, which explains the hurried preparations to ensure stadiums would be ready in time.
Only on November 17 last year did the ICC finalise a deal with Nassau County, Long Island, for the stadium in New York to be built and host eight World Cup matches, including three India games. It was decided that an arena would be constructed in Long Island’s Eisenhower Park, which is an area that stretches across more than 900 acres.
Work began on a 34,000-seater stadium on January 8, with no construction taking place until February 18 — leaving USA Cricket with just a 105-day window before the start of the tournament.
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Eisenhower Park received a drop-in pitch in April — a field created in Australia under the Adelaide Oval groundsman Damian Hough — and in this case, 10 pitches, via a convoy of 22 trucks, were transported from Florida to New York by road over a two-day journey.
Having hosted its opening fixtures, further issues have materialised, with the latest being the quality of the pitch, with the actual wicket — the 22-yard area where the ball is bowled — raising safety concerns. India captain Rohit Sharma had to stop batting after being hit by a ball that displayed uneven bounce in their victory over Ireland.
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Matches between the two countries are rare. They do not collaborate outside of ICC events due to political hostility. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Indian government banned bilateral series with Pakistan, suggesting its alleged relationship with anti-Indian terrorist groups.
Tickets were made available at the start of February and such was the scale of demand, the number of people who wanted a seat was more than 200 times the stadium’s 34,000 capacity. It led to a hike in prices, with secondary resale markets, depending on the website, offering tickets between $600 and $1200 (£470 and £620). If you want a VIP ticket, the cost will exceed $50,000.
The last Test match between the two countries was in December 2007, but Pakistan and India last played against each other less than a year ago, during the group stages of the 50-over World Cup in October 2023. The match was hosted in India, with 132,000 people in attendance at Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium, and they have regularly been paired together in global tournaments.
In the 1940s, India and Pakistan became independent countries after decades of British ruling, but they have since been involved in four wars against one another. The first was in 1947, with three more — in the ’60s, ’70s and ’90s — taking place.
The warmth of relations has varied throughout the years, easing enough between 1987 and 1996 to co-host two World Cups. However, the relationship has rapidly declined since 2008, after extremists blockaded the Indian capital of Mumbai. Over three days, 166 people were killed, including six Americans. India and the U.S. held responsible Pakistani-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba for the atrocities, which are alleged to have carried ties with Pakistan’s chief intelligence agency.
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has been steadfast in refusing to repair any type of relationship. Eight years ago, 18 Indian soldiers were killed at a remote military base, with India blaming a separate group that also allegedly held ties to Pakistan’s chief intelligence. India responded by announcing they had attempted “surgical strikes” on Pakistani terrorist camps.
From a sporting standpoint, the knock-on effect has been in cricket, with Pakistan internationals banned from competing in the world’s richest franchise tournament, the Indian Premier League (IPL).
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Cricket is the second-most popular sport on earth, with more than one billion fans — research by the ICC indicated that India supporters constituted 90 per cent of the overall figure. And now in New York, India and Pakistan meet again as cricket attempts to cut through to an American audience.
(Top photo: For India and Pakistan fans, cricket is simply a religion; by Getty Images)
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Jacob is a football reporter covering Aston Villa for The Athletic. Previously, he followed Southampton FC for The Athletic after spending three years writing about south coast football, working as a sports journalist for Reach PLC. In 2021, he was awarded the Football Writers’ Association Student Football Writer of the Year. Follow Jacob on Twitter @J_Tanswell
