Around 20,000 cricket fans, most of them from outside, are expected for each of the two Indian Premier League (IPL) matches here this month, but they had better look for accommodation outside this small town.
Match organisers have booked most hotels for players, officials and mediapersons well in advance.
“We have somehow managed to book more than [...]
Posts Tagged ‘cricket fans’
Not enough room for IPL spectators in Dharamsala
April 8th, 2010 |
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Making a pitch
July 30th, 2009 |
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By Boria Majumdar
There are plans to launch a Twenty20 cricket league in the US similar to the successful Indian Premier League, a top US cricket official says.
The chief of the USA Cricket Association, Don Lockerbie, said that potential commercial partners are being sought for the tournament.
The matches next year are planned for three venues, including a new cricket stadium that has been built in Florida.
There are some 15 million cricket fans in the US, Mr Lockerbie said.
By organising America’s first professional cricket tournament, Mr Lockerbie said he was trying to make America "one of the top 15 cricket playing nations by 2015".
"[The planned tournament] is a very serious initiative and the chances [of it succeeding] are better than a 50-over tournament," he said.
Mr Lockerbie said proposals have already been sought from potential commercial partners and efforts were on to find out how much the tournament was worth.
Diaspora
With the USA being the second biggest market in the world for cricket television broadcast rights and Internet revenues, organisers expect many companies to set up teams and sponsor the tournament.
If everything goes according to plan, a number of private city or state based teams containing players from around the world will be playing in the tournament which will be recognised by the International Cricket Council.
Many of the matches will be held at a new cricket stadium in Florida, which can accommodate more than 15,000 fans.
"The tournament is a very serious initiative"
Don Lockerbie, chief of USA Cricket Association
What is still unclear is how the ICC will find a window in the crowded cricket calendar to accommodate the American tournament.
Also, memories of the flop inter-island Twenty20 competition in West Indies sponsored by the controversial Texan billionaire Sir Allen Stanford are still fresh in the minds of cricket fans around the world.
The USA Cricket Association is also trying to get five Test cricket playing countries to send their teams to the US to play some ICC-recognised warm up matches in the run up the World Twenty20 cricket tournament in the West Indies.
"If these warm up games happen, it will be history in the making," Mr Lockberie says.
The USA Cricket Association believes there are an estimated 15 million cricket fans in the USA, mostly from the South Asian diaspora.
There are also an estimated 200,000 cricketers in America, according to Venu Palaparthi, co-founder of Dreamcricket.com, US’s largest cricket portal which also runs its own cricket academy.
‘Common heritage’
Mr Palaparthi says cricket was being played in more than 40 universities over the last decade.
Cricket is played at school level in nine states. New York’s public school cricket program has 23 participating schools.
The area along the East Coast extending from Boston to Washington DC appears to have the most number of cricketers. Outside this area, the largest concentrations of cricketers are in Florida, Texas, Illinois, Michigan and California.
With median incomes of expatriate Indians – who form the bulk of the South Asian diaspora – one of the highest in the country, cricket organisers feel that cricket has good commercial prospects.
International cricket can trace its earliest successes to the US.
The first recorded first class cricket match in the world was played between the US and Canada at Bloomingdale Park in New York in 1844 with over 10,000 spectators in attendance.
Cricket remained popular till the middle of the 1880s – an American team even defeated the West Indies in an international match in British Guyana in 1880.
One reason, according to scholars, why cricket did not take off in America was that the game had no "common heritage" to draw on.
"Unfortunately, in the United States cricket has no common heritage to draw on because the individual expatriate histories of the game do not provide common ground," writes P David Sentence in his book, Cricket in America, 1710-2000.
"When an American talks of baseball he knows what Babe Ruth did on a certain day in the year. Every Englishman, Indian, Pakistani, or West Indian carries his own version of cricket history in his head. When these histories are supplemented by American cricket achievements on the field of play then cricket will have arrived in the United States."
Boria Majumdar is a cricket historian from Oxford University and writer of a number of books on the game.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Flintoff makes plea for fewer Tests
July 23rd, 2009 |
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• ‘The public will decide the future of Tests’
• Five-day game is under threat from Twenty20
Andrew Flintoff believes the number of Test matches must be reduced in order to maintain the popularity of the format.
The England all-rounder, who is retiring from Test cricket at the end of this Ashes series, told the Independent it will require a fine balancing act to prevent Twenty20, with its ‘glitz and glamour’, bringing an end to the five-day format.
“The public will decide the future of Test cricket,” he said. “If people turn out to watch Twenty20 and not Test cricket then it could happen. In England we need to maintain the appeal it has. We have seen in the past few years what it means to people and we have to preserve that for the good of the game and the tradition behind it because it is a great format.”
On appealing to young cricket fans, he said that both forms can play an important role in developing the sport. “They like the glitz and glamour of Twenty20 but maybe Twenty20 could have a knock-on effect so that players start with it and then work out how to play the longer form. So it could have a positive effect but it’s going to have to be handled very delicately.”
Flintoff announced his retirement from Test cricket last week, and now says it will be crucial to reduce the number of Test matches played to maintain their appeal, and perhaps, to extend the careers of over-burdened players.
“The one thing we need to do to continue to maintain Test cricket as being special is cutting down the amount and make it a real occasion rather than playing one after another,” he said.
His views were reflected today by the India batsman Gautam Gambhir, who believes that a packed schedule and the number of different formats of the game make it tough for players to maintain a high standard.
“It’s difficult to consistently perform for anyone because we play so much of cricket, [and] in changing formats,” said Gambhir. “The more you play, the more you are bound to fail. No one can keep the intensity always.”
At 31 years old, Flintoff’s Test career has been shortened by injury, and he will hobble away from the longer format at the end of the Ashes, but will continue to play international Twenty20 and one-day matches. He maintains the decision was based almost entirely on his physical condition, but said: “The family is a consideration, one of the kids starts school this year and it is getting more and more a factor. But ultimately it has been my body.”
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