Twenty20 set for U.S. in 2016 – top official

(Reuters) – World-class cricket is finally coming to the United States with “three or four” matches being planned for south Florida next year, a top Caribbean official told Reuters yesterday.

The matches will be Twenty20 fixtures, the relatively new form of cricket that takes just three hours — shorter than an average Major League Baseball game.

They will be part of the Caribbean Premier League T20, a competition which is gearing up for its third season and already has celebrity involvement, with Hollywood actor Mark Wahlberg among the franchise owners.

“The plan is for three or four matches in Fort Lauderdale,” Caribbean Premier League CEO Damien O’Donohoe told Reuters in a telephone interview.

O’Donohoe, who hopes to establish a full-time franchise in North America, said next year’s matches would be played at the Central Broward Stadium in Lauderhill, the only internationally certified cricket ground in the United States.

O’Donohoe is confident that the large Caribbean community in south Florida will pack out the stadium, which holds less than 10,000 people, but he is hopeful that Americans will also attend.

“Americans love watching the best players in the world. If anyone’s in position to give it a shot, we’re best positioned,” he said.

Twenty20 cricket is a fast-paced game that bears little resemblance to five-day test matches that are often played at a soporific pace and are losing appeal even in traditional cricket-playing countries outside Australia and England.

In baseball parlance, each team sends down the equivalent of 120 pitches in Twenty20 — or less if the batting team loses all 10 wickets (outs in baseball).

Sixes (the equivalent of a home run) are far more common in Twenty20 than homers are in baseball.