What you need to know about the&nbsp;T20 Cricket World Cup at&nbsp;Eisenhower Park.

Sports

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Nicholas Spangler

When International Cricket Council officials decided several years ago to hold part of the 2024 World Cup in the New York City area, they faced a problem: There was nowhere to play. 
The region has baseball, football and soccer stadiums in abundance, but when it comes to cricket, “There isn’t one,” said Chris Tetley, the ICC’s head of events. 
Because a batsman can hit the ball in any direction, cricket is a “360-degree sport,”&nbsp;requiring a different stadium configuration than its baseball cousin, Tetley said. There is also the matter of size: ICC regulations for this version of cricket require a round or oval field around no less than 195 feet and no greater than 270&nbsp;feet from center pitch to outer boundary. 
Tetley counted just two existing large-scale cricket venues nationwide: one in Florida and another, a converted minor league baseball field&nbsp;in Texas. 
Hence the temporary 34,000-seat facility now sprouting on a 19-acre site in Nassau County’s Eisenhower Park, in East Meadow. Its steel lattice consists of tens of thousands of steel girders trucked in from across the country and assembled into 40 rows of seating up to 75 feet high, according to the project designers. 
The ground below is laced with channels and trenches capable of draining thousands of gallons of water. Still to come is the 200,000-square foot field, roughly 510 feet across. The pitches, where bowling and batting happen, are being built in Florida and will be trucked to Long Island in the coming weeks, to be dropped by crane in the middle of the field. 
<a class="p-smartembed" data-attr-caption="Construction of the T20 World Cup cricket stadium in Eisenhower Park on March 22.
" data-attr-credit="Newsday" data-attr-f="3x2" data-attr-has-caption="true" data-attr-has-credit="true" data-attr-q="0.3" data-attr-w="400" data-onecms-id="contentid/be7b4677-b4ab-46c5-abcd-eaf9deed13f1" data-onecms-type="image" href="javascript:window.parent.actionEventData({$contentId:'contentid/be7b4677-b4ab-46c5-abcd-eaf9deed13f1', $action:'view', $target:'work'})" polopoly:contentid="contentid/be7b4677-b4ab-46c5-abcd-eaf9deed13f1"><img src="/image-service/alias/contentid/be7b4677-b4ab-46c5-abcd-eaf9deed13f1/liCRICKET24xxxx3444949096.jpg?f=3x2&amp;w=400&amp;q=0.3" />Construction of the T20 World Cup cricket stadium in Eisenhower Park on March 22. </a> 
T20 World Cup USA, the nonprofit hosting the tournament’s U.S. games, is responsible for all stadium construction and maintenance costs. A spokesman for the organization, Mark Jones, said in an email that the venue represented a “sizable investment” but declined to give the cost. 
T20 World Cup’s agreement with Nassau County gives the organization up until May 31 to finish construction and until July 31 to finish stadium breakdown. The playing surface, which will be used for eight matches from June 3 to June 12, will be left in place after the Cup for use by local cricketers. 
T20 is a television-friendly version of the game that takes about three hours to play — an abbreviation of its traditional forebear, test cricket, whose matches&nbsp;last days. The Eisenhower Park facility, dubbed the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in tournament promotions, will feature a June 9 showdown between cricket powerhouses India and Pakistan. 
<h2>Temporary stadium with&nbsp;elite&nbsp;standards</h2> 
Organizers tapped the architects from international firm Populous to design the venue. The firm is known for sports projects including&nbsp;Yankee Stadium, a coming redesign of Belmont Park and eight international cricket stadiums. One facility, the 110,000-seat Narendra Modi Stadium in Gujarat, India, is the world's largest for cricket.&nbsp; 
Jeff Keas, project architect for the Eisenhower Park stadium, said organizers considered several sites before homing in on the park’s Field 6, which was one of the few places big enough to hold not just a cricket oval but also the attendant infrastructure of international cricket, which, like most professional sports, includes expensive hospitality suites, media work areas and concessions. 
“In a permanent facility, we could stack these things — put the toilets underneath, the concourses underneath,” Keas said. “When it’s temporary, it all has to lay out,” taking a bigger footprint. The geography of the site imposed limitations, too, he said, because features like a row of trees and the county’s aquatic center could not be moved. 
Then there were limitations imposed by the game itself: Cricket pitches, like the playing fields for most outdoor sports, tend to be laid out north-south. “If you were to rotate the field more east-west, and, say, you’re playing a game in late afternoon, with the sun setting, then; the batsman would be blinded by the low sun,” Keas said. 
Because cricket plays to a global television audience, the stadium had to accommodate at least 36 cameras, Tetley said. They are typically stationed behind the north and south ends of the pitch, at the sides and at elevation, though none could be placed in such a way that they would impede the sight of any in-person fan. Because those fans have come to expect replays at live events, the design also calls for giant view screens behind the east and west ends of the field, he said. 
Keas said the stadium material came from a company called Arena, which he said rents materials for temporary stadiums all over the world. Girders and other material used at Eisenhower previously have been used for a Formula 1 auto race in Las Vegas and golf tournaments, including the Players Championship, he said. Arena did not respond to a request for comment. 
 He compared the material, some of which could be spotted in recent weeks stacked near the field or in nearby parking lots, to the stuff of Ikea or Lego. “We’ve just taken the component pieces … and assembled it in a creative and innovative way.” 
In recent weeks, workers could be seen assembling massive sections of seating with the aid of a forklift. When the stadium is finished, Keas said, the general admissions seating will be complemented by luxury options including&nbsp;“cabanas, loge boxes, horseshoe boxes and party decks.” 
At least one union has argued — loudly, in the middle of a news conference with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and others — that the workers building the stadium should be union. 
“We are furious that we got boxed out of a project in a park we grew up in,” said Vincent Alu, business manager of General Building Laborers Local Union 66, outside the news conference earlier this month. 
Alu, in a phone interview, said 10 union workers had been hired and five more soon to be added. “T20 USA continues to have constructive dialogue with our partners in Nassau County and the surrounding region, as well as the local labor leadership, and we’re confident we can address any concerns or challenges as we continue apace to host the ICC T20 Men’s World Cup in Nassau County this summer,” T20 USA CEO Brett Jones said in an emailed statement. 
<h2>A surface for World Cup play</h2> 
Meanwhile, Bay Shore-based LandTek Group, which built the field drainage system, has been preparing the playing surface: Kentucky bluegrass for the outfield and&nbsp;soft Tahoma bermudagrass for the pitches, chief operating officer John Sulinski said.&nbsp;Its work includes preparation, construction and maintenance of a 200,000-square-foot turf playing surface and drainage system. 
The cricket pitch is where the&nbsp;bowler delivers the ball, generally off the bounce. It is where batsmen run and wicketkeepers stand guard.&nbsp;For these reasons, its surface needs to be hard, durable and free of timing-wrecking defect.&nbsp;LandTek, whose previous work includes a rebuild of Citi Field and dozens of school and municipal field projects across Long Island,&nbsp;is building its pitches in trays it bought from a company in Australia and shipped to the Boynton Beach base of its&nbsp;Florida division, LTG Sports Turf One. “Each tray is 10 by 82 feet” and six inches deep, Sulinski said. “We followed a process of layering in clay, adding moisture and compacting.”&nbsp; 
The soil composition, which affects playability, is proprietary, Sulinski&nbsp;said. Workers washed the bermudagrass sod before they laid it&nbsp;on the clay to remove contaminants and promote better mating with the clay. LandTek's team includes men who have prepared NFL fields, but for this project the company consulted with Damian Hough, an Australian who is one of the world's premier&nbsp;cricket groundskeepers. Hough could not be reached for comment.&nbsp; 
LandTek workers are scheduled to begin laser-grading turfing the Eisenhower outfield in late April. In early May, they are scheduled to take delivery of the pitch trays, which will have been growing in the Florida heat for months. They will travel north in a 24-truck convoy. When they arrive, they will be dropped into place by crane, four on the playing field, six at a nearby practice facility.&nbsp;Cricket uses one pitch at a time, but the extras will give organizers the freedom to rotate play over the Cup's Nassau fortnight.&nbsp;Growth blankets and heating elements will insulate the precious blades from the shock of transplantation to Long Island’s cooler climate. 
When the trays are in place, workers will mow the pitch grass lower and lower until it is about 3/8ths of an inch before match play. Progression of the cut is key: “Do it too fast, and you can ruin everything we worked for,” Sulinski said. 
They also will compact its clay under specialty drum rollers. Each pitch roller weighs&nbsp;1 to 3 tons, Sulinski said. The clay should be compacted to make the surface hard and true but “not so compacted it can’t accept moisture or have space for the grassroots to grow in,” he&nbsp;said. 
Before the grass is deemed suitable for Cup play, it will be tested for ball rebound, rotation and roll, and the soil below will be tested for compaction and permeability, Sulinski said. “There will be a tremendous amount of activity in a short amount of time,” he said. “We will be ready.” 
All this work is intended to produce a playing surface that is consistent and holds up to the rigors of Cup play but plays not quite like any other pitch in the world, the ICC’s Tetley said. 
“The ball bowler might bowl fast, he might bowl slow, he might try to swing the ball,” he said. “In some places, you might generally have fast pitches where you know the ball is going to bounce high because it comes off the pitch quickly. In other places, you know the ball will spin because it’s slightly dustier, sandier, so there’s a bit more grit when the ball hits the ground and it can deviate more. What that means for the sport is you don’t get a cookie-cutter playing arena. What we’re after is a good, true surface.”

Long Island

Nassau

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Creating the perfect stadium, playing surface critical to June's T20 World Cup cricket matches on Long Island

Every detail counts building Nassau's T20 World Cup cricket stadium

This summer, Long Island will become — briefly — the center of the cricket world, when a temporary stadium at Nassau County’s Eisenhower Park will host eight matches of the International Cricket Council Men’s T20 World Cup. 
But T20 cricket differs in some important ways from other versions of the game, and the tournament format may be unfamiliar to casual fans. Here are some questions and answers to get you acquainted. 
<h3>When and where is the International Cricket Council Men’s T20 World Cup?</h3> 
This year’s World Cup will run June 1-29. Teams from 20 nations will play matches across the United States and the Caribbean. Nassau County’s Eisenhower Park in East Meadow will host eight matches, including one June 9 between powerhouses India and Pakistan. 
The tournament will open with teams divided into four groups of five teams each. After two weeks of group stage play, with each team playing four games, the top two teams from each group will advance. In the Super Eight Stage, each surviving team will play three games. The top four teams will advance to knockout semifinals and finals. 
Most of the world’s top teams will play, including the greats: India, England, Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan. The United States and Canada will also play. Most teams are composed of full-time professional cricketers. 
<h3>What is T20 Cricket?</h3> 
T20, or Twenty20 cricket, is the shortest version of the game, lasting about three hours. The 20 refers to the number of “overs.” Each team gets 20, and then the match is finished. An over is the basic unit of play in cricket. When the bowler delivers six legal balls, he or she completes an over. Each team is trying to score as many runs as possible in its 20 overs. Other versions of cricket feature more overs and take longer to play. Test cricket, for example, can take days. 
Introduced in the early 2000s, T20 has become the format of choice for leagues in India, Australia, the Caribbean and elsewhere, including the United States. Some of these leagues draw millions of viewers and threaten to eclipse the international matches for which the game is famous. In 2022, the Indian Premier League sold broadcasting rights to Disney and India’s Reliance Industries for more than $6 billion. Elite cricketers may play four T20 leagues per year across the world, taking home more than $3 million. 
<h3>How else is T20 different?</h3> 
One difference is the Powerplay over. For the first 6 overs of each team’s at-bat, only two fielders can be positioned outside a 30-yard semicircle in the middle of the field. This creates scoring opportunities for the batting team, said Wasim Khan, ICC’s general manager of cricket. To exploit them, teams lead with their hardest batters and give them “a bit of free license,” Khan said. They might, for instance, attempt to slug the ball past the field boundary, a high-risk, high-reward play. “You take as many risks as possible,” Khan said. 
<a class="p-smartembed" data-attr-f="3x2" data-attr-q="0.3" data-attr-w="400" data-onecms-id="contentid/ce38bc4b-6da1-4048-a4c7-4555e6f1cb54" data-onecms-type="image" href="javascript:window.parent.actionEventData({$contentId:'contentid/ce38bc4b-6da1-4048-a4c7-4555e6f1cb54', $action:'view', $target:'work'})" polopoly:contentid="contentid/ce38bc4b-6da1-4048-a4c7-4555e6f1cb54"><img src="/image-service/alias/contentid/ce38bc4b-6da1-4048-a4c7-4555e6f1cb54/liCRICKET24031731369C.MP4.00_00_16_21.Still001.jpg?f=3x2&amp;w=400&amp;q=0.3" /></a> 
Another difference is that T20 matches employ a tiebreaking Super Over to decide a tied match. Think of overtime in football, or a final set tiebreaker in tennis: One play or one stroke of luck, good or bad, can be decisive. 
<h3>Why should I watch?</h3> 
Cricket is partly a duel between batter and bowler, each employing power and cunning. The fastest bowlers deliver the ball at over 90 miles per hour, giving the batter about half a second to react off the bounce. Others may deliver at half the speed but with spin of 2,000 revolutions per minute. But the cricket batsman can hit across 360 degrees, so he is not without options. He can probe holes in the fielders’ formations with low-risk singles and doubles or go big. 
Most of the world’s best cricketers will play in this year’s Cup. Players to watch include India’s Virat Kohli, New Zealand’s Kane Williamson, Pakistan’s Babar Azam, Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan and England’s Ben Stokes. 
They are playing for money and “national honor,” said Khan. “The World Cup is the pinnacle for them.” 
How can I watch? 
Tickets for most of the Eisenhower Park matches are still available, starting as low as $60 for Canada-Ireland on June 7 and Netherlands-South Africa on June 8. India-Pakistan is sold out. India-United States on June 12 has limited tickets, starting at $300. 
Willow TV, a dedicated cricket channel, will show the matches. The channel charges $9.99 per month. 
<h3>Why Nassau County?</h3> 
ICC, cricket’s sanctioning body, believes there are “tens of millions” of cricket fans in the United States but that there’s potential for growth, said Chris Tetley, the council’s head of events. “We wanted to play in New York because a large number of the existing cricket fans are in New York,” he said. That includes about 90,000 Long Islanders of Indian or Pakistani descent and many more in the metro region overall, some of whom play recreationally or follow the game on television. 
After meeting opposition last year in the Bronx, where local players said building a temporary stadium would squeeze out amateur matches, the ICC found an eager partner in Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman. Blakeman may not be an avid fan but said the World Cup will put Nassau on the world stage. 
<h3>What’s the outlook for the U.S. side?</h3> 
Challenging. The United States won its Cup berth as a tournament host, not as a qualifier, and Group A, where the United States will open, is a rough neighborhood inhabited by India, Pakistan, Ireland and Canada. They are, respectively, the first-, fifth-, 12th- and 20th-ranked teams in the world. The United States is ranked 23rd. India and Pakistan have some of the best players in the world, while no U.S. man appears on the ICC lists of top-ranked bowlers and batters. 
But T20’s compressed format lends itself to upsets. One precedent is the 2022 Cup, when the Netherlands shocked South Africa. 
U.S. bowler Ali Khan, speaking at an Eisenhower Park news conference last week, said the team was ready and willing: “We cannot wait to take the field.”

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T20 Cricket World Cup: What's this game all about and what are these world-class teams doing in Nassau this summer?

Nassau will be center of the cricket world this summer

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One of the biggest rivalries in sports will unfold this June on Long Island when cricket powerhouses India and Pakistan collide on a specially made pitch in a World Cup match at Nassau County’s Eisenhower Park. 
A temporary stadium now being built will hold 34,000 fans. But some Long Island fans say the tournament’s ticket lottery, intended to ensure fairness, shut them out of the game of a lifetime because it made no special provision for locals. 
“It’s the first time in history that the game is coming here,” said Shaikh Shakil, a Westbury resident who runs an insurance firm. “Eisenhower is my backyard … We’re the ones going to suffer all the traffic, we’re the ones who live here and pay the tax, but there’s nowhere to find the tickets.” 
<a class="p-smartembed" data-attr-caption="Westbury resident Shaikh Shakil outside his home Wednesday. Like many local residents, he has been having trouble buying tickets for the upcoming World Cup cricket tournament.
" data-attr-credit="Newsday" data-attr-f="3x2" data-attr-has-caption="true" data-attr-has-credit="true" data-attr-q="0.3" data-attr-w="400" data-onecms-id="contentid/d1c09763-e0a9-4004-8b24-6b45db04c4be" data-onecms-type="image" href="javascript:window.parent.actionEventData({$contentId:'contentid/d1c09763-e0a9-4004-8b24-6b45db04c4be', $action:'view', $target:'work'})" polopoly:contentid="contentid/d1c09763-e0a9-4004-8b24-6b45db04c4be"><img src="/image-service/alias/contentid/d1c09763-e0a9-4004-8b24-6b45db04c4be/liCRICKET24031731366.jpg?f=3x2&amp;w=400&amp;q=0.3" />Westbury resident Shaikh Shakil outside his home Wednesday. Like many local residents, he has been having trouble buying tickets for the upcoming World Cup cricket tournament. </a> 
In an email Thursday, Christopher Boyle, a Nassau County spokesman, said officials were “in the process of negotiations with the ICC and there will be tickets set aside for purchase by Nassau residents, probably on lottery basis.” He did not say how many tickets would be set aside or when they would be made available. 
<h2>World Cup rivalry ramps up demand</h2> 
Cricket’s sanctioning body, the International Cricket Council, announced last fall that Nassau County would be one of the venues for the Men’s T20 World Cup. T20 is a streamlined version of the game, played over several hours rather than days, that fills stadiums worldwide&nbsp;and draws hundreds of millions of international broadcast viewers. 
Nassau is scheduled to host eight matches. The council announced Thursday that a new batch of tickets will be released to the public next week, including tickets for India-Ireland and United States-India but no new India-Pakistan tickets. 
India and Pakistan field the world No. 1&nbsp;and No. 5&nbsp;T20 teams, a rivalry that mirrors and feeds off geopolitical tensions between the two nations, which, like many of the world’s cricket powers, were once colonies of Great Britain, where the sport was first played. 
In 2022, the Census estimated there were 70,673 Long Islanders of Indian descent and 22,913 of Pakistani descent. 
In February, close to 4&nbsp;million people signed up for an online lottery for tournament tickets at venues across the United States and the Caribbean. For the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium — the formal name of the structure being erected at Eisenhower Park's Field 6&nbsp;— there were about eight times as many applicants as available seats for the India-Pakistan game, according to the Council. 
“The demand around India-Pakistan was astronomical, in the millions of ticket requests” from around the globe, said T20 USA&nbsp;Tournament CEO Brett Jones in a phone interview. While the Council reserved some tickets for sponsors, which Jones said was standard practice for global events, most were offered to the public. “With the ballot approach, we took an unbiased&nbsp;view, with no tracking of locations” of ticket applicants, Jones said. Tickets were awarded by an algorithm for “a purely fair, equal system across the board,” he said, adding that set-asides for local fans is “not standard practice.”&nbsp; 
Fans were given a week to sign up for the lottery. Winners got the right to buy tickets at rates starting at $175 for the marquee match or less&nbsp;for some less prominent matches. 
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Some of those tickets have reached the resale market. The ticket resale site StubHub this week showed 145 listings for India-Pakistan. The cheapest ticket was selling for $1,610, including fees. While most tickets were selling for under $4,000, some were far more expensive, including one selling for $52,711, including $11,463 in fees. The site did not show the face value of the tickets for sale. 
<h2>Region gets economic boost</h2> 
An agreement between ICC and Nassau County, approved last October, calls for ICC to use 19 acres at Field 6 for the stadium, with practice pitches at Eisenhower and Cantiague Park. ICC&nbsp;will pay for construction and event costs, compensating the county&nbsp;$125,000 for emergency services and Public Works and Parks workers for each game day, a rate Boyle said would “more than cover expenses.” 
The county will also take profits from parking and a portion of revenues from sale of branded merchandise, though the percentage has yet to be negotiated, Boyle said. Parking revenues could be substantial: The agreement cites an estimated 7,000 to 9,000 vehicles parking off-site at Eisenhower Park, Nassau Community College and the Nassau Coliseum, with each vehicle paying up to $40 per day. 
When the tournament closes, it will leave the county with world-class cricket facilities, Boyle said.&nbsp;The&nbsp;ICC also will give the county 500 match tickets. County officials were planning how to distribute the tickets and will ensure that recipients cannot resell them, Boyle said. 
The agreement calls for construction to finish by May 31 and breakdown to finish by July 31. According to a flyer distributed at Eisenhower Park’s administration office, the park will be closed on game days. The park’s Kite Field and several picnic areas will be closed for the spring and summer. Some additional picnic areas will be closed from mid-May through mid-June, according to the flyer. 
Organizations that use affected park facilities have been offered other locations or other dates, and “no organization has been shut out,” Boyle said. 
Glen Head-based RRDA LI, hired by the county this year for tourism promotion, did not answer emailed questions, but Boyle said the firm was preparing a visitors’ guide that will be distributed to all hotels in the county and partnering with other organizations to stage cricket skills exhibitions this spring. 
In a statement, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said “the event will eclipse a Super Bowl in terms of economic activity and exposure to Nassau County. More that 1.2 billion people will watch the featured match of India vs Pakistan which is the type of marketing that money can't buy.” 
County officials have said the games will attract moneyed visitors including international business leaders. Some&nbsp;local hotels will fill their rooms during the tournament. Matthew Fisher, director of sales and marketing for the Long Island Marriott, located in Uniondale about two miles from Eisenhower Park, said his staffers were seeing “a flurry of reservations coming in … peaking for the India-Pakistan match,” though no teams will stay at the hotel. “More and more people are booking up the whole week,” he said.&nbsp; 
<h2>Ticket distribution frustrates fans</h2> 
Eric Budish, a University of Chicago economist who studies ticket markets, applauded the ICC for its lottery system. While many tickets on the resale market would be a “telltale sign of broker gaming,” Budish wrote in an email, the number of tickets appearing on StubHub and other sites was modest. It probably indicated “some instances of brokers gaming the lottery or fans realizing they could make a quick buck,” he wrote. 
Jones said the ICC “recognizes these markets are legal” and a part of big-time U.S. sports. “Ultimately, it's a demand-driven market,” he said. “Demand is so high, there's always going to be fans of the game who are disappointed.” Besides releasing new tickets, the ICC was working on other opportunities for fans outside of the stadiums, he said. “We want everyone to feel engaged and have a connection to this tournament.” 
Eight of nine cricket-loving Long Islanders interviewed this week said they had been unable to get tickets for the coveted India-Pakistan match. One said he hadn’t seen high-level cricket live in this region since 1985. A few said they’d been looking forward to sharing the experience with their sons and daughters. Some said they’d started playing as boys on the other side of the world and still play, decades later, at a handful of amateur pitches around Long Island. 
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Shakil started an online petition asking ICC officials to allot&nbsp;tickets to Long Islanders. He said he would refuse on principle to pay the prices resellers were asking. “I’d rather give poor people the money to eat than go [to the match]&nbsp;for these crazy numbers. I’ll watch it on TV.” 
Some blamed the ICC or county officials for their predicament. 
But Ajith Bhaskar, of Hicksville, president of an area league, the Commonwealth Cricket League and former board director of USA Cricket, said officials had done the best they could in the face of overwhelming demand. “It’s like the Super Bowl … There’s no way you can satisfy 4&nbsp;million people.” 
Trideep Shivraj, a software engineer from Roslyn Heights, will be attending India-Pakistan. He spent about four hours online in early February trying to log onto the ICC ticket website. He paid $2,000 for a package that gives him one ticket to each Nassau match. 
Word of his good fortune spread and in recent weeks, “I have friends calling me up from London” asking if he’d be interested in parting with his ticket. 
Shivraj said the sky-high resale market did not tempt him. “It has been a rivalry forever,&quot; he said. “I would rather go and watch this match.”

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World Cup cricket: Long Island fans scrounge to get tickets for India vs. Pakistan match

LI fans frustrated they can't get tickets to World Cup cricket matches in their 'backyard'

Nassau County is building&nbsp;a&nbsp;stadium for cricket matches to be played in summer.&nbsp;NewsdayTV&#39;s Drew Scott reports.

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'Sticky wicket' as tickets for Cricket World Cup tough to come by

East Meadow

Newsday

'It's a sticky wicket'

Long Islanders&nbsp;on Thursday got their first look at&nbsp;renderings of a 34,000-seat temporary stadium to be built in Eisenhower Park to host part of cricket’s Men’s T20 World Cup this summer. 
They&nbsp;show a massive circle of tiered seating around a turf playing surface covering about 30 acres near the Harry Chapin Theater. 
Support facilities, like workspace for 200 members of the press and staff of 14 international television networks, will take another 50 acres, and much of the parking will be off-site, including 5,500 spaces at Nassau Coliseum, said Don Lockerbie, development director of the T20 Cricket World Cup. The Coliseum is about 2.5 miles from the park. County officials said last fall that they were also considering shuttling visitors from Nassau Community College and&nbsp;Mitchel Field. 
Viewing areas for overflow crowds will be set up elsewhere around the county. 
The venue will be used for at least eight matches from June 3 to June 12 including one between cricket powerhouses India and Pakistan and one between India and the United States, whose T20 world ranking of 23rd places it ahead of the English Channel British Crown Dependency of Jersey but behind Uganda. Eisenhower Park will stay open to the public during the tournament, said a Nassau County spokesman, Chris Boyle, in an email. 
T20 is a streamlined, television-friendly format of cricket, whose traditional test matches unfold over days. Other venues for the&nbsp;summer&nbsp;tournament will be located in&nbsp;Broward County, Florida, Dallas, Texas&nbsp;and the Caribbean. 
The sport's governing body, the International Cricket Council, put global television viewership for the Men’s T20 World Cup 2022 at 1.28 billion. Cricket has little network television presence in the U.S., but streams on platforms like ESPN and Willow. 
Nassau County Excecutive Bruce Blakeman, speaking Thursday at a news conference at Eisenhower Park,&nbsp;said the sport's global following could mean a local windfall. 
“This is an opportunity for Nassau County to showcase for over a billion people our beautiful park — all our parks — our beaches, health care networks, shopping, restaurants … We’re selling Nassau County as a destination,” said Blakeman, alongside business and community leaders, including Harry Singh, the Bolla gas station magnate and chair of the county’s Cricket Hospitality Committee. 
The county has successfully hosted large events before, noted Blakeman, citing a&nbsp;Boyz II Men concert at the park last summer that drew 40,000 people. Unlike that concert, though, the tournament could have a king and multiple heads of state in attendance. 
This year is the 125th anniversary of Nassau's founding&nbsp;and county officials will invite the heads of state of the nations participating in the tournament to watch in person, Blakeman said. That will include the king of the Netherlands, whose ancestors once claimed ownership of what is now county land. County police along with federal law enforcement partners would provide security, he said. 
Nassau’s involvement came after a bid by New York City Mayor Eric Adams to build the stadium at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx stalled against opposition from&nbsp;elected officials, community advocates and local cricket players. That&nbsp;park is already a cricket hot spot, and they&nbsp;argued against turning over a vast swath of public land to a private entity in the middle of the local cricket season. 
Most of the Nassau construction will take place between next month through&nbsp;May. It will use a&nbsp;modular seating design, employed at PGA golf and F1 racing events, that can be easily dismantled, Lockerbie said.&nbsp; 
John Sulinski, chief operating officer of Bay Shore sports facility firm LandTek, said his company would install the playing surface. That work has already begun: The company’s Florida affiliate recently shipped material for the cricket pitch from Australia by barge, a trip that took six weeks, he said. Workers will lay Bermuda grass sod, cut very short, on the infield, and Kentucky bluegrass on the outfield. 
LandTek worked on the baseball diamond at Citi Field, multisport fields at dozens of Long Island schools and even a few amateur cricket facilities, he said, but “this is our first major league job” for cricket, Sulinski said. 
George Samuel, director and head coach of the Queens United Cricket Academy, in an interview with Newsday last fall, estimated that there were between 100,000 and 150,000 cricket fans in the New York-Long Island area, with 1,000 teams playing across the region. 
Some Long Island cricket enthusiasts who attended Thursday’s event said they hoped the tournament would grow the sport locally and draw interest from overseas team owners who want to enter the American sports market. 
“The economic impact of this could be huge,” said Babar Zia, an engineer from Bohemia who manages the Long Island United Cricket Club. He cited a New York professional team owned by the family of Mukesh Ambanji, an Indian tycoon with a net worth pegged by Forbes at $105 billion. 
“This is the type of money that could come to Long Island.” 
Ajith Bhaskar, of Hicksville, president of an area league, the Commonwealth Cricket League and former board director of USA Cricket, said that amateurs play the sport at about 30 fields from Brooklyn out to Long Island but usually must bring their own equipment, including an unwieldy mat for bowling and batting. 
“Parks don’t have knowledge of this,” he said. 
Bhaskar said he hoped the tournament would lead to investment in dedicated fields, coaching and youth participation. 
“I hope that after they leave, there’s a legacy here for us. It should not just be short-term.” 
With Robert Brodsky

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