2024 T20 World Cup in the US: Three venues selected

- ADVERTISEMENT -

The Ninth Edition of the T20 World Cup will be held from June 4 to 30, 2024 with about 55 matches distributed among the three venues.

The South Asian community in North America will get an opportunity to watch cricket’s biggest stars next year as the International Cricket Council (ICC) picked three venues across the US in New York, Texas and Florida for next year’s Men’s T20 World Cup, the first time the US, not traditionally seen as a cricket-playing nation, will be hosting the tournament.

Along with the US, West Indies is the co-host of the tournament.

ICC Chief Executive Geoff Allardice said on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023, that “the three USA venues that will host part of the biggest ICC Men’s T20 World Cup ever staged, with 20 teams competing for the trophy”.

“USA is a strategically important market and these venues give us an excellent opportunity to make a statement in the world’s biggest sport market”, he said.

The ICC announced that the tournament will be played in Grand Prairie near Dallas in Texas, Broward County near Miami in Florida, and Nassau County near New York City.

The Ninth Edition of the T20 World Cup will be held from June 4 to 30, 2024 with about 55 matches distributed among the three venues.

“We explored a number of potential venue options in the country, and we were hugely encouraged by the enthusiasm the event generated amongst prospective hosts, reinforcing the growing awareness around cricket’s massive fanbase and its power to unite diverse communities”, Allardice said.

The ICC said that modular stadium technology will be used to augment the capacity of the stadiums at Grand Prairie and Broward to 34,000, and in Nassau County, a completely modular structure – a temporary building – will be erected for the same number of spectators.

The ICC said that it has identified potential venues for pre-event matches and training. One of them is the George Mason University in Washington, which is the home for the US Major League Cricket (MLC) team Washington Freedom.

The stadium in Broward County began hosting cricket matches in 2008 and last month it hosted the T20 between India and the West Indies.

The Grand Prairie stadium, which was once a baseball arena, opened in July after it was refurbished and converted for cricket.

When T20 came to New York City, it ran into local politics.

New York Mayor Eric Adams lobbied hard to host the T20 event in the city with a temporary cricket stadium at a city park but gave up in the face of opposition led by a Democrat member of the House of Representatives, Ritchie Torres, who belongs to the leftist Progressive Caucus of the party led by Pramila Jayapal.

While Adams said that the T20 tournament would bring the city $150 million in economic activity and create thousands of jobs, Ritchie countered that having the stadium built in a park, even if it is temporary, amounted to taking public property for private use.

Adams’s Spokesperson Amaris Cockfield said, “New York City put forward a competitive bid reflective of the diversity of our city and the countless immigrant communities who call it home, and we appreciate their support”.

But neighboring Nassau County welcomed T20.

County head Bruce Blakeman said the county is “excited” to hold “one of the most popular sporting events in the world”.

“With more than one billion fans worldwide, this event will attract fans from all around the world to Eisenhower Park”, he said.

The temporary stadium will be built at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow.