The International Cricket Council (ICC) has started inspecting the venues in the United States of America (USA) after having tentatively identified the June 4-30 window for the T20 World Cup 2024 to be jointly hosted by the West Indies and the USA.
With questions surrounding USA’s readiness to host the T20 World Cup, the ICC team this week visited the venues marked to host the matches. The inspection team checked on stadiums at Lauderhill, Florida, New York, Dallas and Morrisville.
Among them, Lauderhill has already hosted international matches and will play host to fourth and fifth T20Is between India and the West Indies on August 12 and 13.
The venues at Dallas (Grand Prairie Stadium) and Morrisville (Church Street Park) are currently hosting the Major League Cricket matches.
However, those two grounds and the Van Cortlandt Park in New York are yet to receive international venue status from the ICC, mandatory to stage top-flight cricket matches.
The venue at New York, which has a capacity of nearly 35000, has been earmarked as the host to the highly-anticipated match between India and Pakistan. The reason being considerable presence of the people from the diaspora in that region.
However, it has not been finalised as yet because the stadium is still getting readied.
But the ICC felt that it can be worked around with at the earliest.
“The ICC has support from New York City Hall and the Mayor. So, we expect the work to be completed on time. Everything is on course as most of India’s matches will be played in the US,” an ICC board member told PTI.
The 2024 edition will see participation from as many as 20 teams and the format will undergo a change as compared to the 2021 (UAE) and 2022 (Australia).
The ICC is very keen to have USA as the co-host of the T20 World Cup because the global governing body feels that it will increase cricket’s chance to be included in the Los Angeles Olympics 2028.
The ICC has already made a presentation to the Los Angeles organising committee and the International Olympic Committee (IOA) will take a call on this later this year.
(With inputs from PTI)
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