How USA embraced cricket and the T20 World Cup

The USA leg of the 2024 T20 World Cup concludes on Sunday when Pakistan take on Ireland in a dead rubber in Group A, with both teams having been eliminated from the tournament. This was the first-ever time USA were hosting a showpiece ICC event and it’s safe to say that the hosts have exceeded expectations with USA qualifying for the Super Eight stage along with India in their group.

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The T20 World Cup in USA was expected to grab attention of thousands of fans, with spectators thronging into the stadiums. But, was that really the case? We take a look:

How T20 World Cup was received in USA

The T20 World Cup in USA was off to an entertaining start with USA beating Canada at the Grand Prairie Stadium in Dallas by seven wickets on 1 June, in a match that was attended by 6,000 fans. That’s a stadium with a capacity of 7,000 so more than half of the spectators turning up for that game made the occasion even more memorable.

However, in a country which is dominated by baseball rather than cricket, low attendance in stadiums in the USA was one of the major headlines during the first week of T20 World Cup matches. This was even prevalent when India took on Ireland at the Nassau County Stadium in New York on 5 June. Several stands in the stadium remained empty during that contest, with one of the reasons for that being expensive ticket prices.

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The grand stands in New York for the India-Ireland game had fans, but the premium North and South stands, that costed approximately $1000, hardly had any spectators watching the match. And the controversy around the nature of the pitches I the stadium did not help either.

The attendance for the India-Pakistan contest in New York on 9 June, though, saw a spike with almost a full house for the game. . A large majority of fans who attended that match were Indians, as a sea of blue dominated that game, which had as many as 34,028 fans witnessing it. That marked the highest attendance for an international match in the United States. Although the reception at the start of that match was lukewarm, fans starting coming in during Pakistan’s run-chase, and especially for Indian fans, that turned out to be an experience of a lifetime.

With USA having beaten the likes of Canada and Pakistan in their first two matches, there was a keen interest among fans going into their match against India on 12 June. There was a significant amount of crowd who attended that match, although the official figure of number of fans is unknown.

All in all, it’s been a mixed reception to cricket in the United States during the T20 World Cup. While the initial response was not as much as one would have expected, the interest among fans grew as the tournament progressed, peaking during the marquee India-Pakistan match last Sunday. And ever since, the interest in sport, especially among Indian-Americans and South Asians residing in the US, has grown and fans will have all the more reasons to celebrate now that USA are in the Super Eight stage.