Or are they too small? Now, I know there are cricket clubs across the United States, but lets say some promoter wanted to hold a series of all star 20/20 matches like England v India, etc etc with the idea of selling tickets and filling actual stadiums.
Off the top of my head, I’m guessing LA Memorial Coliseum would be a good bet, as well as maybe the Rose Bowl. But I envision the batsmen simply aiming for the sidelines getting sixer after sixer after sixer and an innings taking 5 hours with a score of like 400-399 and the fans enjoying many, many souvenirs.
Maybe a auto race track or horse racing track would be better?
There are some older venues which don’t conform to this which are grandfathered in, like Eden Park in NZ.
There have been some examples of cricket being played in soccer fields, for example here is a picture of cricket at Stamford Bridge home of Chelsea Football Club back in 1981, and as you can see the boundaries are very close, basically 30 yards away. There has already been a lot of backlash about boundaries coming in over the last decade.
Once an area, naturally grassed, 64x60m in "radius has been found your biggest problem would be preparing a suitable pitch. Using a “drop-in” pitch would seem to be the logical option. These are 25m long, 3m wide, 200mm deep and weigh around 30MT which poses reasonable, though obviously not insurmountable logistical issues. More problematic for the US are prohibitive regulations about moving soil and grass across state lines.
I understand that Shea Stadium is the only MLB field which has the dimensions sufficient to host a International T20.
A T20 innings will take a max 2 hours, as per regulations.
Alas, as the degrading condition of the ball is integral to the conduct of the game, balls hit for six need to be returned for the next delivery.
Baseball grounds would be possible, the distance from home plate to the rear fence would be nearly long enough but unfortunately, due to the shape and in order to provide big enough boundaries all round there would have to be a lot of seats removed.
I’d have to question the need for N. American cricket venues to be major. It’s not as if the lack of seating capacity is the reason more people don’t attend or care about the game of cricket.
If you put aside the need for major venues, there are plenty of places available to play the game with a proper playing field. The game of cricket in N. America would be much better served by focusing on solving governing body foolishness like this: USACA challenges ICC authority in CPL issue | ESPNcricinfo
30 megatons would indeed be something of an issue :).
It sounds like it might be easier to find an existing cricket pitch that happens to have plenty of space surrounding it (and in the US, most things have plenty of space surrounding them, right? :)) and just make the outfield bigger, then put up a temporary stadium around it.
Actually, if they played under the usual conventions, something that American fans would have to get used to is the fact that there are no souvenirs in cricket.
If the ball goes into the crowd, you are expected to throw it back. Same in other sports like soccer, Australian rules football, rugby, etc.
Thoroughbred race tracks should hold cricket matches with no problem. The infield of Fairmont Park in Illinois (which is by no means a “large” track) is 800’ wide by more than 2,000’ long. Even the race track infield at the Missouri State Fairgrounds, which doesn’t host anything more than quarter-horse races, is more than 400’ wide by almost 1,000’ long.
The infield for the Indianapolis Speedway is more than twice the size of Fairmont, but there isn’t enough unpaved/unbuilt land in there to hold a horseshoe meet.
