India to face off against South Africa in quarters.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: The embassies of eight cricket-playing nations will host a community cricket tournament, The Ambassadors Cricket Cup, at the South Germantown Recreational Park, in Boyds, Maryland, on September 7th.
The participating embassies – whose respective ambassadors will also be present at the event – are (in alphabetical order): Australia, Bangladesh, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom, and West Indies.
The tournament is being organized by Neil Parsan and Mike Moore, the ambassadors for Trinidad & Tobago and New Zealand, respectively. It was their idea to bring as many cricket playing nations together as possible in order to foster international unity and also spread awareness and interest in the sport of cricket itself.
A phone call to the Indian Embassy, requesting more information, was not returned.
Though cricket is one of the most popular sports in many Caribbean and Asian countries, as well as in the UK and certain pockets of Europe, it has yet to catch on in the US, where it is largely played in community leagues by immigrants who bring the sport with them from their home countries.
Cricket in the US is run by the United States of America Cricket Association (USACA), which was founded in 1965 and is currently headquartered in Miami Beach, Florida. In 2006, the Smithsonian Institution estimated that about 30,000 Americans actively watch or play cricket in some capacity. There are a few major cricket tournaments in the US, such as the American Twenty20 Championship which began in 2011. An attempted was made to start an American Premiere League, similar to India’s IPL, but it never gained any traction and subsequent plans were dropped.
The Ambassadors’ Cricket Cup tournament is being held in conjunction with the Washington Cricket League and the Maryland-Nationals Capital Park and Planning Commission.
The tournament schedule states that India will face South Africa in the quarterfinals, Australia will face off against the UK, New Zealand will play Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka will oppose the West Indies.
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