ICC T20 World Cup 2024 |
Cricket is always thinking about the World Cup.
The T20 version starts on Sunday (01:30 BST), just 195 days after the men's 50-over World Cup ends.
There's a Women's T20 World Cup later this year and a 50-over event in 2025, as well as various Champions Trophies, Intertoto Cups and Universal Championships.
Some of these may be fictitious, but you get what I mean.
Whether familiarity breeds contempt is a matter of opinion, but change is as good as a break, and this tournament is certainly not like India's struggles last autumn.
The 2024 T20 World Cup oozes freshness from both the host nation and the participating teams.
This is cricket's American dream because the sport has finally understood the beauty of a global competition played not by the teams we always watch, but by teams we've never seen before.
ICC T20 World Cup 2024 |
It would be outlandish to think that this tournament will have the same impact on the American sports consciousness as the 1994 World Cup, and in fact, this tournament will be held in the Caribbean and partly in the U.S. states instead.
But it's also part of a very concrete and undeniable growth of the sport in the United States.
Major League Cricket is already luring players out of the English summer and has only just been given official List A status.
After 128 years away from the Olympics, cricket will return to Los Angeles in 2028.
The venues in Texas and Florida are real cricket grounds, and the appeal will be provided by a pop-up stadium in New York, complemented by a drop-in pitch from Adelaide.
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