In the week leading up to the T20 World Cup final, a larger-than-life, gold statue of Virat Kohli was unveiled in Times Square, the ultimate sign of cricket’s arrival in the US.
Finally!
It’s the stuff the ICC’s dreams are made of.
With India winning a World Cup after 13 long years and the ICC hoping to win over America, King Kohli has been enshrined in the heart of consumerism.
Except there’s no actual statue. It’s just a CGI ad campaign for the mattress company, Duroflex, that Kohli advertises for: ‘#greatsleepgreathealth’. There’s been some confusion about whether the statue is real or not. Which is also a bit like how the T20 cricket World Cup’s stopover in New York feels in hindsight. Did it really happen? Or was it all a dream? A mirage in the suburbs of Long Island?
Unlike the permanent Texas and Florida grounds, the modular stadium in Nassau county, Long Island, is being dismantled for good. The World Cup final ended with rapturous scenes in Barbados. But for now, the ICC’s American experiment is over. So how should we measure its success? And where to for cricket in places like New York?
The ICC is thrilled that the total attendance at games across the USA was 190,000. The India-Pakistan clash was reliably seismic (34,028 in attendance) and is estimated to total $78 million in economic value for the New York region. Along with big numbers, there were of course big names at the India-Pak match. Cricket royalty like Yuvraj Singh and Sachin Tendulkar watched alongside NRI power hitters like Satya Nadella of Microsoft and celeb chef Vikas Khanna of Bungalow, New York’s hottest new Indian restaurant. Nadella is also part of a group of investors who have bet nearly a billion dollars on making Major League Cricket soar in the US.
But the fans’ passion is what makes any of this possible. So what about measuring success in decibels? Rohit Sharma’s first six against Pakistan apparently provoked a 122db roar. The day after the clash, a Hispanic clerk at the Super Convenience store near the stadium was still stunned by the celebrating Indian crowds that overwhelmed the usually quiet suburban streets.
Despite not having the atmosphere of other India-Pakistan build-ups, the fans were irrepressible. They picnicked in Central Park the day before the match. Some who couldn’t get tickets – or refused to pay the high prices for them – went to a sold-out live screening at the Citifield baseball stadium, sponsored by Coca Cola. That ‘halftime show’ featured a performance by diaspora darling Tesher of ‘Jalebi Baby’ fame. There were also multiple watch parties in Manhattan bars, with Bollywood DJs, VIP tables and bottle service – which started at 9.30 am. A ‘desi power’ weekend of this scale was probably last seen when Modi howdied his way into Houston, Texas, in 2019.
But looking at the India-Pakistan match alone isn’t a particularly useful barometer of cricket in the US. Crowds and money will go wherever the two countries play. This time it happened to be New York. It was a huge, noisy, absorbing spectacle. But, like the stadium they played in, and the rain that threatened to derail the match, it came and went.
What can smaller moments tell us then? Like the brave-hearted, odds-defying performance of the co-hosts, Team USA? After beating Pakistan, the USA broke through to the Super Eights – and briefly even to mainstream American news. Oracle engineer and Ivy league grad Saurabh Netravalkar’s dazzling bowling turned him into, as the joke goes, every desi kid’s nightmare and their parents’ dream. With profiles in the New York Times and the Washington Post, will he be that one household name that helps cricket break through? Potentially through Major League Cricket? Or will the shine wear off now that the US team currently has no matches scheduled against full ICC members until the 2026 T20 World Cup?
What if we look beyond the World Cup for a moment? Big names, viewership and ticket sales are essential to sustaining the business of cricket. But what about sustaining cricket itself? What about those who’ve been playing, celebrating, covering, and promoting the game in America before the World Cup arrived, and will continue to do so now that it’s left? Their everyday passion can’t be captured by the tournament organisers’ numbers.
The Brooklyn Lycans of the NYPD Police Commissioner’s Youth Cricket League in 2018. Photo: X/@NYPDCommAffairs.
Consider the Brooklyn Lycans, a Bangladeshi team that plays in Bangladeshi Cricketers Alliance of North America (BCANA), an NYC-based league. The Lycans didn’t go to the stadium to watch the Bangladesh-India warm-up match because it clashed with their own league game. Well, all except one Lycan, newly minted 24-year-old law graduate, Ekok Soubir. “Going to watch Bangladesh play was always a dream of mine. But my teammates made a lot of fun of me for wanting to watch others play as opposed to playing myself”, he admits. “Winning a championship in our leagues is just as important to us as winning a World Cup”.
For the leagues, coaches and mainly immigrant players, who keep cricket alive in New York, the World Cup’s arrival in the US can perhaps be read more as a ‘career achievement award’ – some overdue visibility. On the sidelines of the Bangladesh-South Africa match in New York, Ekok’s teammate Tareq Manawer said, “from 2009-10, when we came in, there was such a large Bangladeshi community playing without even recognition or anything like that”. For Bangladesh and other countries to play here in 2024, he continued, “it just shows how cricket has grown”.
Crucially, this growth has been happening well before the World Cup arrived in the US. Chubb Bedessee runs Bedessee Imports, the largest supplier of cricket gear in the US, which has been in business for more than four decades. Today, off the top of his head, he can list at least fifteen leagues in the New York region alone, from the Kerala Cricket League to the New York Tennis Ball Cricket league.
Bedessee has also been coordinating an ambitious proposal to construct a permanent stadium in New York. After a citywide search, his group identified a plot near a Southeastern tip of Brooklyn close to Marine Park. They’re aiming to gather 100,000 signatures to petition the city. Meanwhile, the Ambani-backed team, Mumbai Indians New York, who won the first edition of Major League Cricket, are reportedly planning to build a permanent stadium in Marine Park. The Ambanis, with their deep pockets, might benefit from people like Bedessee’s deep knowledge of the local cricket scene.
While suffering post-World Cup withdrawal symptoms, it’s tempting to curl up on a Kohli-approved mattress and dream of a day when his golden statue might actually be in Times Square; when big players, audiences, and infrastructure are a staple of cricket in New York. But that’s not the whole picture by any means.
“Despite unacceptable playing conditions, we are either playing on the weekend or spending our days thinking about how the next weekend seems so far away”, said Soubir. Meanwhile, in West Windsor-Plainsboro High School, New Jersey, wicket-keeper Sri Srikanth and a few friends convinced the school to let them set up a team, which debuted in a four-school tournament this May. “I think it’ll get slowly but surely bigger”, thinks Srikanth. “Even in my school people are trying to learn it”.
In fact, cricket in the New York region is a kaleidoscope that keeps revealing its different avatars the more you look – in schools, public parks, multi-use courts, car parks, and empty patches of grass. And it’s sustained, above all else, by passion. Still, it would be nice to someday have a stadium that doesn’t get torn down.
Ashish Ravinran is a Singaporean-Indian writer and filmmaker based in New York City. His upcoming feature documentary, Chasing Cricket, follows the story of immigrant teens playing in an NYPD-run cricket league.
