One of the world’s biggest sports that has largely been untapped in the United States is coming to Brooklyn — at least for a day.
The borough will play host to CricFest on Saturday at MatchPoint NYC in Gravesend, where an expected crowd of nearly 1,500 fans will come together for a celebration of all things cricket from 4-7 p.m.
The interactive event includes batting cages, a virtual reality cricket simulator, Indian street food vendors and two special guests flying in from India: cricket legend Anil Kumble and current star Harbhajan Singh.
“The event is quite a spectacle … really just a celebration of cricket,” said Ipsita Dasgupta, the president of Hotstar International, the company hosting the event and the official digital streaming partner for Vivo IPL (Indian Premier League) games. “If you look at the community across the U.S., we started speaking to different cricket academies, associations, organizations. We realized there’s this huge unmet demand for events, activities, content and just a lot of excitement for people to get together.”
The IPL starts in April on Hotstar, which offers commentary for the games in six different languages. Saturday’s event will begin the unofficial countdown to the opening of the season.
Kumble and Singh, who will be on hand to play some games with those in attendance and sign autographs, have made their mark as standout bowlers in the IPL. Kumble is a Hall of Famer and former captain of the IPL’s Royal Challengers Bangalore. Singh is currently a member the Chennai Super Kings after spending the past 10 years with the Mumbai Indians. The two were teammates on the Indian national team.
Some American teams, like those from New York City’s Commonwealth Cricket League, are expected to attend the event, said Vissu Kottapalli, the co-founder of CricClubs — an online service that hosts leagues and real-time scoring for games.
“The event like this is another avenue for people to celebrate the sport they love so much,” said Kottapalli, who said a similar event in India is what got him hooked on cricket. “It’s great that it’s happening here in New York.”
The “T20” style of cricket — which the IPL plays — typically features games that last three to four hours, which Kottapalli believes could help make the sport catch on in the U.S.
“One of the things people have talked about is the attention span of audiences here in the U.S. is not more than three hours,” he said. “Cricket, until recently, has been an all-day event. … The T20 game fits right in that sweet spot.”
Dasgupta said that given the international nature of cricket, they couldn’t think of a better city to host the event than New York.
“We’d love to believe that cricket will catch on in the U.S. overall, but the immediate goal is to connect the hundreds of thousands of cricket lovers in the U.S.,” Dasgupta said. “We’re really looking forward to having a mix of people, from really hard-core cricket enthusiasts to people who are just starting to get excited about cricket because it has more to do with their identity than knowing much about the game already.”