Thousands of fans ‘bowl’ into Morrisville for 1st Major League Cricket tournament
Cheers and balls smacking against cricket bats will echo out of Church Street Park until Tuesday for the first-ever Major League Cricket tournament.
Morrisville, a cricket hub, was selected as one of the two towns alongside Grand Prairie Stadium in Grand Prairie, Texas, to host the inaugural season’s matches.
The excitement can be felt in the home of every cricket fan in the town, especially those who made it happen.
Thinking about Morrisville becoming an international hub for the sport gives Jana Chellaperumal “goosebumps.”
“This is a dream come true,” he said. “This is a cricket tournament on a different level that the country has never seen yet.”
Chellaperumal is a former president of the Triangle Cricket League, which has about 60 teams and over 3,000 players in the area. The seed to get Major League Cricket and to put Morrisville on the map for the sport was planted about 10 years ago.
The town first hosted Minor League Cricket games in 2021, giving fans a taste of what would come.
“Hundreds of volunteers worked on the ground,” Chellaperumal said. “So, here we are enjoying the fruit.”
The economic impact the Major League Cricket games will have on the town is yet to be determined, said Rose Cornelius, president of the town’s Chamber of Commerce. Still, over 3,000 people from around the country are expected to be in Church Street Park, at 5800 Cricket Pitch Way, for the games between six founding national teams.
After the games were announced in early June, tickets sold fast, with five of the seven games sold out as of Friday morning.
Church Street Park was expanded for the games, getting more cricket pitch lanes, LED-lit practice pitches and nets, athlete seating, and safety nets. Food trucks will line the park, and CBS Sports and ESPN+ will stream the games in Morrisville and Texas, broadcasting them to thousands of fans.
An investment in Morrisville
“We’ve gone from being a park to now a world-class cricket facility in eight years, which is amazing,” Town Councilman Steve Rao said.
USA Cricket started eyeing Morrisville years ago to make more investments in areas with a large fan base, Rao said. Nearly half (46%) of the residents in Morrisville are of Southeast Asian descent.
Because of its large fan base, the bat-and-ball game of cricket — involving two teams, a total of 22 players, and a 22-yard field with wickets at each end — has grown in popularity over the years.
Similar to baseball, one team will bat while the other is on the field during the game. The teams switch during the long inning. The batting team will try to score the runs while the bowling team will try to stop them by fielding the ball.
Teams can score up to 200 points in the match, where the game’s object is to score more runs than your opponent in a certain amount of time. To score a run, players need to hit the ball with the cricket bat.
Most young cricketers have only seen their favorite players on TV or social media, but the games in Morrisville have brought the stars to the town.
Top players include Afghanistan T20 captain Rashid Khan, South African internationals Faf du Plessis, Quinton de Kock and David Miller, West Indians Kieron Pollard, Andre Russell, and Dwayne Bravo, and others from England, Australia, Zimbabwe, India and New Zealand.
Russell, a Jamaican cricketer for the Los Angeles Knight Riders, said in an Instagram post he didn’t know “such lovely ground was in North Carolina.”
The cricket field in Morrisville is one of three International Cricket Council-accredited fields in the country, making it eligible for the T20 Cricket World Cup, a goal for Morrisville leaders.
“We’re hoping that the ICC will choose us,” Mayor TJ Cawley said. “That would have 500 million people watching. We’re hoping that this league will continue to expand and in a couple years, it would be wonderful to have one of our own Major League teams.”
The town is home to the Minor League Cricket team, the Morrisville Raptors.
How to see Major League Cricket in Morrisville
Tickets for the matches on Monday and Tuesday are still available starting at $12, according to the Major League Cricket website.
Friday night, the Seattle Orcas face off against the Texas Super Kings at 5:30 p.m.
July 22: Washington Freedom vs San Francisco Unicorns at 5:30 p.m.
July 23: Los Angeles Knight Riders vs Seattle Orcas at 1:30 p.m.; MI New York vs Washington Freedom at 5:30 p.m.
July 24: San Francisco Unicorns vs. Texas Super Kings at 5:30 p.m.
July 25: MI New York vs. Seattle Orcas at 5:30 p.m.
