The mission to turn Florida into a cricketing hotspot has failed. But was it ever likely to succeed? ©Getty
The walk into Broward County Park is a pleasant surprise for new visitors. The Florida venue, located close to downtown Fort Lauderdale, emerges along a main road laced with smoke shops and McDonalds outlets much more familiar to American traffic than cricket grounds.
Once in the facility, the red backdrop of the clock tower outside the stadium, then the pavilion and the stands themselves gives off almost a Caribbean feel. Perhaps skewed by the interminable walk through machine-gun laden security checkpoints and sniffer dogs surrounding the ICC's pop-up Long Island venue, Broward County instead feels like a proper cricket ground.
Because it is. Opened in 2007, it is America's only purpose-built cricket stadium. Yet Friday's washout between the USA and Ireland was a symbolic moment for Florida, beyond the record rainfall in the days prior and the no result which sent the home team to the Super Eights. This would be the first time USA played there since 2021 when, coincidentally, Ireland were last in town.
For an Irish journalist following the national side, the disparity is unavoidable. Ireland is a full member nation crying out for its government to build them a permanent cricket stadium they can call their own. America, an associate member, doesn't even use the one stadium in the country that was built specifically for the sport. Broward County, the roughly $80 million dollar taxpayer project, has been usurped as the home of American cricket. The whole affair serves as a warning to countries without a strong, traditional cricket-watching culture of the dangers of spending public money on white elephant grounds.
After Friday's washout, USA vice-captain Aaron Jones expressed a desire to play more cricket in Florida, while perhaps offering a reason why games here have been sparse. "This wicket is not the same as the Dallas wicket and it's not the same as the previous wickets," he explains. "Here I think the facilities are great but I think it just depends on who we're playing against."
Grand Prairie, a repurposed ground from other sports, if not Texas as a whole, is the venue du jour for American cricket. One of the co-hosts of MLC last year - alongside Church Street Park in North Carolina - Dallas hosted World Cup games as well as USA warm-up matches against Bangladesh and Canada. In 2022, Moosa Stadium in Houston welcomed a CWC2 League series involving the USA.
Drainage issues undoubtedly don't help Florida if the local county does want to lure more international cricket - as
