On America’s East Coast, it’s already down to single digit celsius temperatures, outdoor swimming pools have closed shop by first week September, local cricket leagues have stopped playing their weekend matches.
The leaves are falling, the wind is rising, flu vaccines are in, school kids are down with upper respiratory infections; overcoats, boots and and hats are back.
Cricket, anyone?
“Nope. Too cold! 7th November for a ticket on the bleachers? You must be kidding!” says Aravind Gedela, a Sachin Tendulkar devotee who plays on one of the dozens of cricket leagues in New Jersey — an area that rivals California for its cricket zeal. Most of the leagues have a standard format of 40-over matches all summer weekends.
Not even for Sachin and Warnie?
“You know, if they say it’s a 100 dollars to watch from up close and they are offering access to go up and chat with Sachin, of course I’ll go. Not if I’ve to sit all the way back and watch three dots on the field,” Gedela says firmly.
Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne, who retired from the game in 2013, will each captain a team of some of the finest international players of the past 35 years. Some of the players are as old as 52, playing three exhibition Twenty20s in New York, Los Angeles and Houston.
Pakistan’s Wasim Akram, South Africa’s Shaun Pollock, Brian Lara of Trinidad and Tobago and Mahela Jayawardene of Sri Lanka are among the other all-time greats on show. Virender Sehwag is the latest retiree to jump in. He retired a week ago, announced his All Stars participation a day later.
All the matches will be played at baseball stadiums: New York’s Citi Field on 7 November, Houston’s Minute Maid Park on 11 November and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on 14 November.
Queens, the venue for the first match, is a hotbed of everything Asian and the Citi Field venue is an iconic ballpark with 45000 seats. All the $ 25-$50 tickets are sold as on Monday but all the other tickets upwards till $ 175 are available. Although the New York Mets site is the “official” ticket sale site, Craigslist and other websites are selling too. Ticket booth staffers at the venue says those may be “resellers.”
“I’ve always thought that the reason for retiring is that you wanted to stop playing,” former Australia captain Ian Chappell said in his ESPN column. “The other thing I don’t understand is why people want to watch older cricketers.”
This is a link to the seating map for the first match at Citi Field in Queens. It gives you a good idea of the seating pattern and availability.
“People are starving for a big cricket event like this,” Ben Sturner, CEO of Leverage Agency, told TIME magazine.
Warne calls these 40,000 plus capacity venues the “MCG, SCG and Lord’s of baseball” in cities which are home to “50 million cricket-starved Americans”.
Warne is betting on the shared features of baseball and cricket to help his cause: “In many ways, 20Twenty Cricket is similar to major league baseball – 120 pitches per team, the equivalent of 20 six-ball overs, is common.”
There’s even a cricket 101 primer for newbies:
But oddly enough, many of the regulars on the cricket circuit say they are “not talking about the All Stars T20at all.” Not even on their Whatsapp groups.
Here’s the thing:
Asian Americans are the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the U.S, they make up the largest share of recent immigrants. Cricket is already big here, the reason is intuitive – there’s so much place to play the game. Most ball fields have swing sets nearby and it works well for families to hang out on weekends.
Cricket is not the novelty, the God of cricket certainly remains one.
Access to Sachin and the other greats is what Indians are willing to pay for.
“Some samosas, tea and a chat with Sachin,” now that’s something I’d like, says another die-hard Sachin fan.
Not samosas and tea but wine and cheese yes. If you are ready to part with $750 – $1200, you can go for a ‘gala dinner with the stars’ on 6 November in NYC, the night before the first match. Check out this link.
For $1200, you could buy yourself an economy class New York – Mumbai -New York ticket. Those who pay $ 1200 to dine with Sachin and Ganguly are typically the “golf class” who don’t buy economy class tickets to India. It’s the folks who buy the $100 tickets who are playing the game on weekends.
How many have booked their seats? Dunno. The PR machine behind the event says it’s “too busy” and there’s “just one week left so how can you expect us to answer that.”
Pricing is the other blip. How do you expect Americans who shop at Costco and Walmart on the weekends to pay $ 100 to watch a game they don’t know?
Costco is a wholesale market the size of many football fields where even the wealthy shop for grocery.
The link to the game on the stadium website is fancy, done in signature baseball colours: “The gods of cricket play on American soil for the first time. Come rain or shine.”
Come rain or shine? Really?
That out of the park for a six!
On match day, the weather forecast says it’s going to be a minimum temperature of 6 degrees celsius and max of 15.