Cricket takes center stage in 3 U.S. cities

I’m a fan of practically all sports. While in the Army, I was exposed to cricket and fell in love with the sport. The spirit, the customs, the athletic demands and the internationalization all made it fun and challenging.

Some years ago, while on vacation in the Caribbean, I attended a practice session of the West Indies squad, made up of the best cricketers from that region’s many islands.

I had occasion to chat with Brian Lara of Trinidad, captain of the West Indies team, one of the best batsmen in the world and holder of several international records. Just a few sentences into our conversation, Lara asked: “You’re American, right? When were you converted?”

I laughed and said that I hadn’t given up baseball. I’d simply added cricket to my fan repertoire.

“Splendid,” he said. “Try to spread the word back home.”

Well, cricket hasn’t made much of a dent in the U.S. It faces some pretty fierce competition from our big-three team sports: baseball, football and basketball. Nonetheless, the cricket world has hope. After all, the sport is the world’s second-most popular in terms of participation and spectators, just behind soccer.

This month, cricket is undertaking its most aggressive and ambitious promotional push ever into the U.S. With the help of a major New York-based sports marketing agency and the involvement of two of the sports’ biggest names, two all-star squads of top players from eight countries have been pulled together to stage three-day events in New York, Houston and Los Angeles. There will be gala receptions, clinics and a match between the two squads in each market.

There’s hope that exposure to the game at this level will generate new interest and appeal to the American sports fan.

The New York match will be played at Citi Field on Saturday. Ticket sales for the 46,000-seat stadium have been lively, owing partly to the large number of cricket-loving ex-pats in the metropolitan area. But sales efforts aspire to put Yanks in many of those seats as well.

Then it’s on to Houston and the Astros’ Minute Maid Park, seating 40,000, followed by L.A.’s Dodger Stadium (56,000). That’s an ambitious lineup of venues with a daunting number of 141,000 seats to fill, but the organizers are optimistic, and early interest in all three cities is encouraging.

I could list the impressive team rosters here, but unless you’re a cricket fan, the names probably wouldn’t mean much to you. But, if you are, here are a few of the players whose participation will wow you. Tendulkar, Warne, Ambrose, Walsh, Ponting, Pollock, Sangakarra, Kallis and Akram ... super-stars, all.

When Brian Lara (yes, he’s playing, too) asked me to spread the word back home, neither of us envisioned anything like the massive international effort that’s about to begin. I hope for the sake of cricket that this tour will spark some new American interest in a terrific sport that’s deserving and rewarding.

For more

For more details on the sport, participating players, the schedule and more, click on allstarcricket2015.com or met.com/cricket. If you have cable TV, there’s a cricket channel (835) in Central Florida that telecasts international play 24 hours a day.

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