CRICKET
Bold bid to stage T20 World Cup in New York City's Central Park
Ben Horne, The Daily Telegraph
October 28, 2017 9:50am
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CRICKET is determined to take a chunk out of the Big Apple, and James Sutherland reckons they should be going straight for the core.
With Yankee Stadium the wrong shape and the international cricket ground in Florida too irrelevant, the Cricket Australia chief executive is asking why the iconic New York landmark, Central Park, smack bang in the middle of Manhattan, can’t host Australia v India in a World Twenty20 showpiece for the ages.
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The world’s most iconic park visited by 25 million people every year has packed in hundreds of thousands of fans for superstar concerts like Bon Jovi, Mariah Carey and Paul Simon, and now Virat Kohli and David Warner are being imagined as the next headline acts to grace the open green pastures of cricket’s first-ever pop-up stadium.
Adam Zampa, Usman Khawaja and Steve Smith in Times Square, New York.
The ICC board led by Cricket Australia are pushing for a World Cup to be played in the United States in the next eight-year international cycle, between 2023-2031, which they believe with the right planning and investment can emulate FIFA’s hugely successful American World Cup back in 1994.
However, unlike soccer which simply used big time rectangular NFL stadiums located in every city, finding appropriate cricket venues remains an enormous obstacle for administrators to overcome.
When Shane Warne took his band of All-Star globetrotters to America a couple of years ago, the crowds in New York, Houston and Los Angeles were stunning, but the legitimacy of cricket played on elongated baseball diamonds was ridiculous.
Fancy, but not cricket friendly. Pic: Getty
Equally, attempts to make a big deal out of cricket played on proper fields in the back waters of Florida is virtually pointless.
Enter Central Park — the 843 acre oasis in the middle of the world’s most buzzing metropolis, which in Sutherland’s crystal ball, could find the room next to its zoo, ice rinks and museums to play host to a multimillion-dollar pop-up cricket ground, complete with temporary grand stands, light towers, a drop-in pitch and the potential to break broadcasting records.
“Look, this might be a ridiculous dream. But just imagine Australia versus India played at Central Park on Manhattan Island,” Sutherland told The Daily Telegraph.
Australia v India can put on a show. Pic: AFP
“We know that within 50km or so of New York City there are literally tens of thousands of cricket fans. And we also know the propensity of Indian fans to travel from all over America.
“There’s lots of expats there. To that end. We don’t need to just look at the traditional American stadiums, we can also look a little bit creatively at the opportunity to play a big international match, to make a statement in an iconic place like Central Park.
“Perhaps there are other good examples of places across America where you could play a big game like that with temporary grandstands.
“My personal view is that it would be great at some stage in the next cycle for the ICC to commit to having a world event in the USA. Why not? … Bring big games and big names to the country … It’s one of the biggest commercial markets in the world.”
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Sutherland knows the Central Park idea seems out there, but he says cricket must explore every avenue to cash in on its biggest untapped market and that it must happen in the next decade.
Of the 90,000 international fans to travel out to the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand — 25,000 were from North America — a higher number than any other continent.
The USA sits below only India, Australia and England when it comes to cricket TV rights and the fact Warne pulled crowds in excess of 30,000 to matches involving past greats illustrates what an enormous potential the game has to reach out to America’s huge expat population of people with subcontinental backgrounds.
Sutherland says cricket must follow the blueprint set by soccer, which followed up arguably the most successful World Cup of all time with a Major League Soccer competition two years later.
“The reality is if you give enough lead time and telegraph it, you can get there,” said Sutherland.
“There’s two or three stadiums now, there are stadiums you can convert and there’s green space you can convert with temporary grandstands.
“Soccer is a good analogy in terms of the big decisions FIFA and others made in terms of their desire to grow the game in the US a long time ago.
“There’s a very clear strategy in how to grow the game and there’s a lot of layers to that … and as I often talk about it’s building from the top down and the bottom up.
“There are tens of thousands of people who live in America who play cricket every week during summer.
“Participation is really important, engaging with the competition, but also at the higher level, creating aspiration to play for your country and having a pathway competition, including in the college system.”
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