Last week, Mayor Eric Johnson announced that the National Cricket League, a brand new professional league, will have a Dallas-based franchise and will set up its league headquarters in Dallas.
Dallas is already the top-rated sports business market in the United States, according to a Sports Business Journal report published earlier this year. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is also already home to the College Football Playoff Committee, the Big 12, the American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, the XFL, Major League Rugby, Major League Cricket, and several other sports entities.
“I was born in India but made in Dallas,” Arun Agarwal, a chairman and advisor for the National Cricket League (NCL), told The Dallas Express. “… The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex has one of the largest South Asian diaspora[s]. … We already have that base love of the game, … so naturally, it makes sense with everything Dallas has to offer [to add cricket].”
Cricket has become the second-most popular sport in the world, and interest has increased in growing the sport within the United States, where more than 30 million people have already discovered a passion for the game and another 4.4 million subscribe to streaming and television services to watch it.
“Cricket has really been gaining strength,” Agarwal told The Dallas Express. “We have close to 30 million enthusiasts, which are already there in this country from Southeast Asia, England, South Africa, the West Indies, and other countries. Truly, they have been really craving for it. … We thought this was the time to take back the game and give it a format, ultimately to get that South Asian diaspora and expand it to the mainstream American sports lover.”
While Major League Cricket has its teams play at a facility in Grand Prairie, the NCL is concentrated on embracing the city of Dallas and Dallas County by building a new cricket stadium. According to Agarwal, the specific site of the stadium will be announced at a later date.
“It is my hope that we will be able to cheer on our city’s team in a stadium in Dallas soon,” Mayor Johnson said during a press conference at City Hall. “The National Cricket League has my full support as it works to bring the first dedicated cricket stadium to Dallas.”
The NCL will consist of six teams of some of the best cricket players in the world competing in “sixty strikes” or T10 cricket. Games generally take around 90 minutes to play and are known for ending with high scores.
The league will kick things off with a nine-day tournament in Florida in December.