“Ladies and gentlemen! Westbury is the next stop, switch to Westbury for the cricket world Cup!”After all these years, New York hosted its first major cricket match on Monday when South Africa defeated Sri Lanka by six wickets at the brand new Nassau County ground on Long Island.
It’s a scaffolding palace of a pop-up stadium, 30 miles outside of Manhattan. A crowd of 12,500 residents went to the Long Island Railroad to watch and were rewarded with a great day for a game. The sun was there, the sky was sapphire, the playing field was tricky and fast, and the stick was extremely difficult.
Hosting a World Cup in New York is an foolishly ambitious undertaking. The organizers have built a stadium here in the middle of nowhere bigger than Lord’s, and so many things have turned out so well and well that it seems a pity to have to challenge some of them.
But the truth is that the playground stinks. Only one batsman managed to score faster than a ball, and it was Reeza Hendricks who scored four. In total, the game was played at a rate of just over four times more and included all 12 boundaries, six fours and six sixes, in both innings.
As the Twenty20 matches went on, it was a good advertisement for test cricket as, despite the slow scores, it was strangely compelling, just as low-scoring matches can be. The New Yorkers-mostly Sri Lankan expats, but mixed with a good scattering of South Africans, Indians, English and Trinidadians-didn’t care much about it. For the most part, they seemed thrilled to just be at the game. They made a hell of a noise in the middle of them, even though Sri Lanka’s woeful 77 was their lowest total in T20 cricket.
The surface seemed to be two steps away. Some deliveries were faster than a minute in New York City, others barely bounced off the ankle. Two limits were marked in the first 12 overs, one an uppercut by Kusal Mendis, the other a pickup over midwicket by Kamindu Mendis. It was not for lack of attempts. The Sri Lankans swung and missed so many times against the South African quicks that one wondered when the referees would start calling the balls and punches.
It didn’t help them that South Africa had such a nasty action for this kind of ground, with four fast bowlers – two of them, Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje, quicker than most, and another, Marco Jansen, bigger than anything else. In the end, it was the other, Ottniel Baartman, who took control of the heats. He came to the first change and let Pathum catch Nissanka with his very first ball deep in the third row. Baartman conceded only three in his first two overs, and by the end of the power play Sri Lanka had only 24 to one.
