Back on home soil, US cricket team reflects on great T20 World Cup run

Ali Khan knew exactly when everything would change for the United States national cricket team.

After beating Pakistan when I saw the headlines, the American bowler was talking about his team’s huge upset in the Men’s T20 World Cup on June 6. ESPN and all the major news channels, breaking news on my phone. Usually it’s NBA or NFL, you know? All the major sports. After the match, I saw notifications popping up left and right on my phone, USA beat Pakistan.

To find a period when cricket was treated more like a mainstream sport in the United States than the summer of 2024, you'd have to at least must go back to 2004, when Google started tracking search data (the volume of searches) traffic for the US national cricket team in June was 20 times greater than in any other month.

It’s been almost a month since the United States captivated the sporting world by advancing from the group stage of the tournament on home soil. The Americans defeated Canada and Pakistan, lost to India and survived a rain shower against Ireland to secure their place in the final eight teams on short-form cricket’s biggest stage.

As the American team readjusts to civilian life, the stars continue to struggle with their performance.

It's just a kudos to everyone in the team who have gone through different struggles in their lives to get to the level where we are now, bowler Saurabh Netravalkar said. I just want to give a kudos to everyone in the team.

The United States’ path to the tournament was far from conventional. When it won co-host rights to the 24th competition with the West Indies, the country was severely short of regulation playing fields. A temporary 34,000-seat stadium in East Meadow, NY was built on site for the event, joining existing facilities in Lauderhill, Florida and Grand Prairie, Texas.

The team also looked different from most American national teams. The roster was filled with immigrants and sons of immigrants. Netravalkar, for example, was born in Mumbai. Batsman Aaron Jones was born in Queens to Barbadian parents. Wicketkeeper Andries Gous is from South Africa. The list goes on: all 15 players on the team are either first- or second-generation recruits to the United States.

In terms of diversity, I think it's a very special team that we have in terms of people from different countries sharing their different backgrounds, Netravalkar said. So you learn a lot from each other. And that's a special thing about our team, that we have so much diversity and we cherish each other's cultures.

For Khan, his Pakistani heritage gave the Americans' crowning moment a special meaning. Pakistan won the Mens T20 World Cup in 2009 and the sport's flagship tournament, the Mens Cricket World Cup, in 1992.

It was quite an emotional match for me, Khan said. You grew up in Pakistan, played all your cricket, school, family, you still have family there. It was a different emotion for me. But when I put on my USA shirt, everything was forgotten.

The arc of Khan’s career mirrors the recent evolution of cricket in the United States. Once a sales representative for Cricket Wireless in Ohio, he has been playing the game full-time since starring for the Trinbago Knight Riders in the 2018 Caribbean Premier League at T20 level.

The squad is full of such success stories, but a number of players also maintain jobs outside of cricket, the most notable of which is Netravalkar, a software engineer for Oracle whose LinkedIn page spread far and wide during the tournament.

I have received many congratulatory messages on various platforms like Instagram, Facebook, even the office messaging system, Netravalkar said. It was heartening to see.

As they advanced to the Super 8, the Americans clashed with more Commonwealth sporting giants: South Africa, the West Indies on home soil and England. The United States gave a good account of themselves against the South Africans before suffering lopsided defeats in their final two games.

For Netravalkar the lesson was clear: professionalism is king.

“What I've noticed personally is that there's no shortcut to getting better,” he said. “It's about volume, the sheer volume they do in practice and the sheer professionalism they have. We need to play more competitive games against top teams to get that experience.”

The Americans won't have to wait long for a return to the international T20 stage. Their performance in 24 has already qualified the United States for the 2026 event in India and Sri Lanka. In 2028, cricket will be planned to return to the Olympic programme for the first time in more than a century, in Los Angeles.

We have enough years to build a strong team and be ready, Netravalkar said. Because four years is a reasonable time with the potential we have. And we have seen it now at the World Cup. Even with limited resources, we can give tough competition to some good teams.