NEW DELHI: The newly-built Nassau County Intern­ational Cricket Stadium, near New York, was launched on Wednesday with the sport’s world body “excited” to conquer new territories through the T20 World Cup in June.

The 34,000-capacity stadium, with infrastructure from the Las Vegas Formula 1 circuit and drop-in pitches prepared in Florida, will host the hotly-anticipated India-Pakistan clash on June 9, among its eight scheduled World Cup games.

The showpiece 20-over event will be co-hosted by the West Indies and the United States starting June 1 with New York, Florida and Dallas as venues.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) remains happy with the focus on the India-Pakistan clash and the Nassau project as part of bringing the game to the US.

“Yeah, absolutely! We can run that game anywhere and the interest in the fixture would be immense,” Chris Tetley, the ICC’s head of events, told reporters in a media roundtable. “The news stories that we have seen and the media coverage in the US itself as well as amongst the cricket media around the world. I have not seen that before around an ICC event.”

Tetley added: “We are really excited to bring the T20 World Cup cricket to the US and the opportunity that it presents to the sport and from what I can see there is an audience really waiting for us to come.”

T20 Cricket will also feature as one of five new sports at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. Making a cricket stadium in Nassau remained a huge challenge for the ICC, who got in Adelaide Oval curator Damian Hough for the job.

Hough created the first drop-in pitch in Adelaide in 2013 and the latest strips at the Nassau County ground promise good cricket and balance between bat and ball.

“People shouldn’t be concerned about drop-in pitc­hes,” said Hough. “They are proven around the world, definitely in Australia.”

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2024