USA announce cricket arrival with seismic T20 World Cup victory over Pakistan

Just hold on a minute. Are we really all ready for an American takeover of cricket? The sport has apparently been waiting forever for the United States to happen. Well, here we go.

A week into their first attempt at co-hosting a T20 World Cup, the USA have cracked it. And it is all a bit unnerving.

On opening night, they were spellbinding in beating a close rival.

They have provided a cricket fan bucket-list venue at the baseball ballpark-turned cricket ground in Dallas, which hosted perhaps the most vivid spectacle of the tournament so far when Nepal played the Netherlands.

And now, the greatest moment yet in the long and storied history of United States cricket.

Better than them hosting the first ever international cricket match (albeit a loss to Canada in Manhattan in 1844).

Better than that time President Barack Obama said, shortly after starting his tenure in the White House, said he was reading Netherland, the cricket-based novel by Joseph O’Neill.

On Thursday, they beat Pakistan. They did it in the most thrilling manner imaginable, via a Super Over. Although they needed that tiebreaker to settle it, the USA fully deserved it.

If it is possible to dominate a nerve-shredding tie, then they managed it. They were brilliant.

How did they manage to be so cool? This time last year, the USA players were getting themselves into trouble with cricket’s authorities as they were getting het up over playing against Jersey in front of a handful of people in Windhoek.

The Channel Islanders are a few rungs down the ladder from Pakistan, and yet, with a partisan crowd baying for the other team as well as millions watching on TV, the USA controlled it. It was crazy stuff.

The USA had enjoyed the perfect start on the opening day of