12/21/24
July 05, 2004
Terror war fears foil US cricket bid : Seems like a shame for the growing number of cricket fans in America although probably just as well for the smooth running of the tournament.
According to the people trying to launch a pro-cricket league in the States there are 7 million cricket fans in America. Hard to believe but that's what the organisers are claiming!
posted by Pete at 02:08 AM on July 07, 2004
As I slowly acclimate to the marketing world, I am finding numbers like this much more believable. Given the way my own industry appears to define downtime, for instance, I'm just surprised they aren't claiming 30 million US fans.
posted by billsaysthis at 11:26 AM on July 07, 2004
Aren't any of you Americans embarrassed by this situation? That as a nation, you (collectively) have grown so paranoid that one of the major sporting events cannot be played there for fear of letting brown-skinned people into the country?
posted by salmacis at 12:11 PM on July 07, 2004
On the grand scale of things we're embarassed about at the moment, whether or not cricket matches can reasonably be played here is pretty low (though, yes, obviously it does demonstrate some serious brokenness). (And it is probably worth noting that the article doesn't say that the US government actually said that they wouldn't let people in, it says the cricket body was afraid of that scenario because the US government wouldn't speed things up for them, which is arguably a fairly different scenario.)
posted by tieguy at 02:04 PM on July 07, 2004
Doesn't this article say an entirely different thing? No mention of US laws here. The International Cricket Council (ICC) has snubbed an attempt by US cricket authorities to host World Cup matches in Florida in 2007, opting to keep the tournament in traditional West Indian venues in the Caribbean and Guyana. The only embarassment I would feel is if one of my friends saw me in the crowd at one of these matches.
posted by usfbull at 02:34 PM on July 07, 2004
The fall-out from 9/11 means the likes of St Kitts and Nevis, two tiny Caribbean islands with a joint population of 39,000, have outbid the United States, official population, according to the CIA factbook, 293 million. But the cricket-playing and -watching population of St Kitts and Nevis, joint population 39,000, is probably ten times that of the United States, official population 293 million ;-)