The city of Indianapolis will spend $6 million on a state of the art cricket pitch in an attempt to lure overseas workers and bring international sporting exposure to the Midwestern city.
The sporting venue will host a number of games unfamiliar to its locals- namely cricket, rugby and Gaelic and Australian football (AFL)- as the latest development in what is becoming a race between American cities in economic development.
Major Greg Ballard has high hopes for cricket in Indianapolis.
“I don’t think there’s any city that’s trying to put all these pieces together, but there’s always a first-mover advantage for those who try to do it right,” he told the AP.
“These are global sports and they’ll give us more visibility in the global marketplace.”
While Indiana is best known in sporting terms for producing NBA legend Larry Bird, the Indiana Pacers and the Indy 500, cricket is hoping to make an American comeback in the State’s capital city.
The game was first brought over to the colonies by the British in 1700s, but disappeared after the Civil War when baseball, a branch of cricket, became the nation’s number one sport.
Indiana is going all out on a sport that doesn’t have much of a following outside of Commonwealth countries. That hasn’t stopped the city signing a three-year deal to hold a national amateur cricket tournament beginning in 2014.
According to Darren Beazley, the chief executive of the United States of America Cricket Association, there are some 50 cricket leagues in the US alone, populated by some 30,000 players-mainly immigrants from former British colonies.
Major Ballard’s unique plan may be a long shot in the face of economic development as it attempts to capture the fascination of his city, but America’s small cricketing community are surely pleased by the news.
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