Team USA have officially secured One Day International (ODI) status after defeating Hong Kong by a massive margin to become the 17th ODI nation in the 2023 Cricket World Cup Cycle and have entered the CWC League 2 structure from 2019-2022. USA have secured the status until 2022 ICC Cricket World Cup qualifiers and will play guaranteed 36 ODI matches in CWC League 2 in that period.
It has been a 15 year break since USA made their ODI debut in 2004 Champions Trophy in England, where they played their only two ODI matches against Australia and New Zealand. In what will be a historic day in USA cricket, 24th Apr 2019 will forever remain one of the greatest moments in their cricket history and opens up plenty of opportunities for International cricket to be staged in the Americas region.
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The day belonged to Xavier Marshall, who hit a sensational century and along with Steven Taylor, scripted a massive 184 runs partnership for the 2nd wicket, which laid the platform for a big total. Although Hong Kong managed to pick up regular wickets in the final 10-15 overs, USA reached an imposing total of 280/8 in their 50 overs, thanks to Timil Patel’s cameo of 12-ball 34 at the end of their innings.
Ali Khan picked up the crucial wicket of Anshuman Rath to derail the chase at the very beginning of Hong Kong innings and individual strikes from Steven Taylor, Saurabh Netravalkar, Timil Patel and Karima Gore reduced Hong Kong to 104/5 in the 29th over. The chase was very much out of the question at that point in time and Hong Kong’s remaining batsmen played it safe to make enough runs on the board to lower the net run-rate damage to the minimum.
USA have been marked as a strategic market for growth of Cricket for a long time for International Cricket Council (ICC) and following the events that have happened in Namibia this week, it’s a massive shot in the arm for USA Cricket to scale new heights as they are also planning to launch their own T20 league in the coming years. Having hosted International Full members in T20I matches and Caribbean Premier League (CPL) matches, it is now an opportunity for the home team to have their own International games at Central Broward Regional Park stadium in Florida.
Brief Scores
USA 280/8 in 50 overs (Xavier Marshall 100, Steven Taylor 88, Timil Patel 34 n.o, Kinchit Shah 4/37, Aizaz Khan 2/57) beat Hong Kong 196/7 in 50 overs (Kinchit Shah 45, Aizaz Khan 35 n.o, Ehsan Khan 31 n.o, Karima Gore 2/49, Timil Patel 1/23, Saurabh Netravalkar 1/14, Ali Khan 1/17) by 84 runs
