Ignoring Local Audience, Overshooting Budgets, No Practice Facilities: ICC's New York Plan for 2024 T20 WC Adds No Value to the Game

The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Friday announced the schedule for the 2024 edition of the T20 World Cup. The multi-nation event, co-hosted by USA and West Indies, will see 20 teams in action and it will be the first time a major ICC tournament will be hosted in the USA. As many as 16 games will be played in the region with eight of them going to the modular facility in New York.

The Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, construction of which is yet to get underway, is where the marquee India-Pakistan fixture will be played on June 9. In addition to the Pakistan game, India will play Ireland and US at the same venue before ending their group stage campaign vs Canada in Florida.

In excess of US$30m is being spent to come up with a makeshift facility on the outskirts of New York that’ll be dismantled after a week. For that kind of money, a permanent infrastructure can come up in a country that actually is in need of financial aid.

ICC wants to expand and grow the game in new markets, and has identified USA as the one with the biggest potential, but has conveniently ignored the local audience. The spectators expected to fill the over 30,000 modular in facility have got a really raw deal as matches have been scheduled to serve Indian prime time and will be played in the early hours of local time.

The India vs Pakistan clash is likely to be played around 10 am local time and it’s going to be a nightmare for the locals to make it to the Nassau County.

Commuting woes

For starters, it will take some commuting to get to the venue as it is a fair distance away from the NYC. The fastest way to get there is by your own vehicle and it will take close to an hour and more than two hours if you take a combination of train and bus ride. Expect the duration to go up as all roads will lead to Nassau County on match days. And this is just the commute time from New York.

“Everyone is confusing the venue to be in New York City. It is very very far from NYC, to be honest. Most commuting in NYC is done via the brilliant subway (train) system in place. And that is not the case when it comes to commuting to Nassau County. One needs to take a combination of public transport and have to do fair walking to get to Eisenhower Park. The morning start means expecting a lot from locals to wake up early after a Saturday night for a cricket match. So expect the stands to be filled with expats,” says a New York resident.

The broadcasters, who have shelled a lot of money for TV and digital rights, were well within their rights to pressurise the global body for timings suiting the Indian prime time but it defeats the purpose of taking the game to the US. ICC should have taken a leaf out of the Major League Cricket (MLC) book which didn’t take the Indian audience bait and kept games keeping the local audience in mind.

Infrastructure still a concern

It seems the global body is very confident of the magic wand which will change the look of the “green field” in Nassau County but the situation is not very encouraging at the moment. Noted journalist Peter Della Penna shared visuals of the site where the modular facility is proposed and it’s just an open green field at the moment.

The ICC had said construction will begin early in 2024 but it’s yet to get underway. Even when it does, it will be a race against time to get it ready for an ICC event and test it enough for marquee games of the multi-nation event. A drop-in pitch is likely to be used and the makeshift venue will host six matches back to back without any gap.

The all-powerful finance committee of the ICC, headed by BCCI secretary Jay Shah, is irked by the money being spent on a modular facility which will be razed down after the tournament ends. There are no checks and balances on the money being spent for infra upgrades in the region. When CricketNext reached out to the ICC for budgeting details, the global cricketing body didn’t divulge anything.

Apart from the budget being overshot, the lack of quality practice facilities close to shortlisted venues is still a cause of concern. The ICC had earlier said they have identified a few facilities close to the venues in Dallas, Florida and New York but it remains to be seen how feasible they would be.

As things stand, ICC’s American Dream is just one little goof-up away from falling flat on its head and the scheduling and timing of matches have certainly not helped.

The 20 teams have been divided into four groups of five, with the top two teams progressing to the Super Eights:

Group A: India, Pakistan, Ireland, Canada and the USA

Group B: England, Australia, Namibia, Scotland and Oman

Group C: New Zealand, the West Indies, Afghanistan, Uganda and Papua New Guinea

Group D: South Africa, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Netherlands and Nepal