It’s easy enough to find the little cricket ground hosting the opening game of the T20 World Cup, just take a right when you get to the three enormous chrome dinosaurs outside Ripley’s Believe it Or Not! and follow the road round past its multicoloured replica of the Taj Mahal. The harder part is finding anyone who knows anything about what they’re doing over there under the floodlights. “It’s dead today,” says the lady behind the car rental desk at Dallas Fort Worth international airport. “Is there anything going on this weekend?” Her colleague doesn’t look up. “Nope,” he says, “I checked.”
The T20 World Cup has arrived in the USA with all the fanfare of a broken kazoo. Whatever else the ICC spent its Saudi oil sponsorship on, it isn’t on-the-ground advertising here in Dallas. The 28 June Popsicle Parade in Saddlehorn Park has a bigger billboard presence on the streets around the ground. It’s only when you get inside the venue that you’d know there’s a World Cup on.
