Helpless broadcasters, having invested massive chunks of money in the upcoming media rights cycle, are watching helplessly as the International Cricket Council (ICC) gets busy making a mess of the 2024 T20 World Cup.
The governing body’s fired-up plan to host a World Cup in a country where even First Class cricket is not played on a regular basis is putting cricket’s biggest revenue-generating property at grave risk.
The 2024 T20 World Cup is set to be co-hosted by the West Indies and the United States. The event was awarded to these countries long before the rights to ICC events for the 2024-27 cycle went on sale, albeit with the promise of ready infrastructure.
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Today, while the ICC wants to host 17 matches of the event in USA alone, with the crown jewel — the India-Pakistan encounter — in New York, the idea isn’t just fraught with risks but already looks like a futile one.
Nine months to go for the World Cup and no venue has been identified as yet. Why? Because there is no venue in the first place. The ICC is, in fact, bent on making a mockery of the tournament by trying to plan a modular venue for the proposed New York clash that otherwise has no cricket infrastructure.
The hunt for a venue got the ICC to the Bronx, a borough of New York City, where the plan of erecting a 34,000-seat modular venue in Van Cortlandt Park was taking shape. As The City had reported last month, the plan was to begin construction around January 2024 and then pull the structure down after the World Cup ends.
Holding the high-profile India-Pakistan fixture in NYC was on top of ICC’s wish list but the Van Cortlandt Park plan hit a major roadblock. Local media extensively reported on the objections raised by various Bronx groups and a senior ICC official confirmed to CricketNext that the Van Cortlandt Park plan is likely out of the picture now.
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“The Van Cortlandt Park plan is running into a lot of troubles and it wouldn’t make any sense to risk that big a match at a makeshift venue. A venue team is already inspecting more open fields in the area but nothing is certain yet as far as the venue in New York is concerned,” says an ICC official.
The Guardian’s report – ‘They’re big, bad bullies’: New York’s bitter fight over a 34,000-seat cricket stadium – on September 1 highlighted the various challenges in store for the ICC and why the modular venue plan in Van Cortlandt Park is “unrealistic and unprecedented”.
Excerpt from the report: “Adrian Benepe, New York City’s parks commissioner under the former mayor Michael Bloomberg, calls the stadium proposal “completely unrealistic and unprecedented”. Even one-night concerts in places like Central Park have to pay rental fees of as much as $2m, Benepe says, and those events are free to the public. The World Cup would be a perversion of that: a major sporting event taking over a public park for free, to charge people hundreds of dollars a ticket. “That would never have been allowed before,” he says.
When CricketNext reached out to the ICC with a query about the venue situation in the USA, there was no concrete response and just a line: “We’ll be announcing the West Indies and USA venues in the next month or so”.
Venue check in the USA
There has been a lot of cricketing activity in the USA in the last 10-odd months as ICC continues its hunt for venues. With nine months to go before the 2024 T20 World Cup, the venue situation in the United States continues to be a worry.
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The ICC wants to host as many as 17 World Cup fixtures in the US, including the India vs Pakistan contest. How and where continue to be the two biggest questions. Except for the Lauderhill and Dallas facility, which hosted the Major League Cricket (MLC) fixtures, there aren’t any “ready facilities” with arrangements for spectators. Lauderhill has hosted a decent amount of cricket in the past and is approved by ICC but Dallas is yet to get a taste of international cricket.
- The Moosa facility has a maximum capacity of only 2,500
- Morrisville venue, which recently hosted MLC fixtures, can accommodate around 3,500 spectators
- At this point, there are only two venues which look prepared to host international cricket and only one of them (Dallas) has a seating capacity of over 5,000. Lauderhill has around 5,000 seats but can accommodate 10,000-15,000 more in the various open spaces
- The Grand Prairie, however, is yet to get ICC approval for international fixtures and none of the above-mentioned venues meet ICC checkpoints for a World Cup venue
- Woodley Park is being explored as an option in LA but a lot of modular work is required for it to take the shape of a cricketing venue
- With regards to New York and the big India-Pakistan plan, it has hit a major roadblock
The frustrating wait with regard to the situation in the US continues and all the stakeholders would desperately hope the ICC addresses the where and how of the 2024 T20 World Cup.
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