USA in contention to host 2024 T20 World Cup
After the success of the Cricket All Stars tournament featuring some of cricket’s greatest ever players, the International Cricket Council (ICC) are thinking of conducting a Twenty20 World Cup in the USA in the near future. The country known mostly for baseball and basketball has huge potential for sports and the the ICC want to milk that opportunity in tying to popularize the game of cricket.
The 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand attracted a lot of US audience and a lucrative broadcast deal is worth big money to the ICC, according Tim Anderson, head of global development of the cricket’s governing body .
“If we continue to make good progress, we would (hope to) see a World Twenty20 in the USA in the next rights cycle," Anderson told the Sydney Daily Telegraph, with 2024 as the likely date according to the Telegraph.
"We think that'd be a great concept. Other sports have done that, not just football, but rugby are doing that with major events as well so we see that as a medium-term goal."
India will be hosts for the upcoming T20 Wold Cup in 2016, and Australia will host the next in 2020. Bringing the shorter version of the game to USA is a long term goal Anderson is aiming at and he says that the goal of popularizing cricket is well and truly under way.
"In the shorter term, our full members are keen to play some big cricket in the USA. I think that'd be a fantastic way to take cricket to a new heartland for the game," said Anderson.
"There's already an ODI-accredited venue in Florida (and another potential site in Indianapolis) but, within the next 12-18 months, you could potentially have full members playing cricket (one-day internationals) in the USA.”
The Cricket All stars attracted huge crowds to the stadiums in New York, Houston and Los Angeles as nostalgia hits it’s peak with Brian Lara, Courtney Walsh, Shaun Pollock, Muttiah Muralitharan, Wasim Akram, Shoiab Akhtar, Allan Donald, Jonty Rhodes, Glenn McGrath and Sourav Ganguly all giving cricket fans an adrenaline rush.
The ICC is also looking at establishing cricket in the country's college sport program to enhance the quality of the game at a grass root level.