In the backdrop of the Florida leg of the T20 World Cup in great danger of being a total washout due to thunderstorms over the last few days, the Indian team landed at Fort Lauderdale for their last Group A match against Canada on Saturday. In a slightly positive development, it wasn’t raining when Rohit Sharma & Co arrived there.
The sun had come out and it was dry, for the moment. Sources in the Indian team management told The Indian Express that, according to local officials, there was a chance of clear skies for the India game.
India have won their first three pool games and are already through to the Super Eight, but the games at Fort Lauderhill are crucial for the identification of the second team in the group to go through. The other games scheduled in Florida are Pakistan vs Ireland and USA vs Ireland. Pakistan cannot afford either of those to matches to be abandoned as it would take the co-hosts to the next stage at their expense. Pakistan need to beat Ireland and for the Americans to lose to the Irish to make it. But the prospect of either game – before and after the India match – going ahead is bleak at the moment.
The organisers of the Florida leg of the T20 World Cup say that even if the rain isn’t torrential, the biggest problem for cricket in the region are the strong winds that often blow away the covers. For this reason, more covers to protect the ground from the elements are in place. But cricket can be possible only if the rain relents. Adding to the pessimistic outlook is the poor drainage facility at the ground.
The only game of the tournament that was supposed to be held at Central Broward Regional Park Stadium Turf Ground – between Sri Lanka and Nepal – was abandoned on Tuesday evening without a ball being bowled. That contributed to the islanders’ ouster from Super Eight contention.
According to the US National Weather Service (NWS), a “flood watch” remains in effect for all of southern Florida through Friday evening. That makes the USA-Ireland game highly improbable, as all remaining matches at the venue are day games, scheduled to start at 10.30 am local time.
“Heavy to excessive rainfall over southern Florida may continue to bring areas of flash and urban flooding, with locally considerable urban flooding possible, at times into this weekend,” the NWS posted on X.
Pictures of flooded roads were seen on social media over the last few days. Fort Lauderdale received up to 9 inches of rain in some areas on Wednesday, in addition to the 3 inches on Tuesday between 2 and 10 inches of rain had been predicted for Thursday. Wet weather is likely to continue in parts of Florida through the weekend.
If the rest of the Florida leg follows the same script, it would be a somewhat fitting end to the American part of the T20 World Cup. Matches in New York saw indifferent pitches, some downright dangerous, with 137 being the highest total achieved there. If the plan was to attract new viewership to the sport through the slam-bang format and break into virgin territory, it wasn’t the best advertisement. The root of the problem was the delay in finalising the venue and then the lack of sufficient time to get a drop-in pitch prepared in Adelaide, nourished in Florida and bedded in the suburbs of The Big Apple. As it is, ticket prices and access to the stadium were bottlenecks that only the most die-hard cricket enthusiasts were willing to negotiate. In many instances, ticket-buyers didn’t get the seats they expected to.
The non-expat population in the United States would be more put off than interested with a game that is often dependent so much on the weather for the players to even get on the park, and often doesn’t provide the big-hitting entertainment it promises.
But vagaries of nature look likely to trump vagaries of cricket in a place that’s ironically called the ‘Sunshine State’. The tropical disturbance has prompted a flash flood emergency in southern Florida, putting the World Cup matches in grave uncertainty.
The T20 World Cup, followed shortly by the second season of Major League Cricket, were expected to provide a major fillip to cricket in the States, which will stage the return of the sport to the Olympic fold in four years’ time. As things stand, the jury is still out on the incision cricket has made into the biggest sports market in the world.