DUBAI,
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has confirmed Texas, Florida, and New York will be the three USA venues identified to host the 2024 Men’s T20 World Cup 2024.
Grand Prairie Stadium in Dallas, Broward County in Lauderhill, Florida, and Nassau County in New York will be venues for the tournament to be staged in the US for the first time. The ICC Board awarded the hosting of the event to the West Indies and the US in November 2021 and added the venues were selected following extensive evaluations.
“The US is a strategically important market, and these venues give us an excellent opportunity to make a statement in the world’s biggest sport market. We explored a number of potential venue options in the country, and we were hugely encouraged by the enthusiasm the event generated amongst prospective hosts, reinforcing the growing awareness around cricket’s massive fanbase and its power to unite diverse communities,†said ICC CEO Geoff Allardice.
The ICC said in its statement that an agreement has been reached for the construction of a 34,000-seat modular stadium in Eisenhower Park, a purpose-built sports and events park in Nassau County, New York, on awarding of the required permit next month.
It added that it has commissioned the design and development of the venue complete with team and match official changing areas and workspaces, media and broadcast facilities, and premium hospitality areas.
The site will include a fan zone, as well as match day operations and event presentation and production infrastructure. Team training facilities will be developed on existing adjacent cricket fields and nearby cricket clubs. The work schedule will commence towards the end of January 2024 with a completion date of May 2024.
Talking about the pitch’s creation, ICC said the development of all playing surfaces will be overseen by internationally reputed curators and local natural sports turf experts, with one of the significant legacy benefits of the project being the improved cricket playing surfaces that will be left behind.
ICC further said the existing venues in Grand Prairie, which hosted inaugural Major League Cricket matches and Broward County, where India has played T20Is against West Indies previously, will be increased in size by modular stadium solutions to expand seating, media, and premium hospitality areas subject to final agreement, with the deadline to complete the upgrades being May 2024.
It concluded by saying several other venues around the US, including George Mason University in Washington, the new home of MLC team Washington Freedom, have also been identified as potential venues for pre-event matches and training.
The 2024 Men’s T20 World Cup will be hosted jointly by the West Indies and the USA. 20 teams will be divided into four groups of five each for the first round.
