Field of dreams Reality check for ICC in its romantic plan to draw American hearts to cricket

Thirty million does not go as far as you might hope in Manhattan, where it will just about stretch to a single Chelsea penthouse.

But out on Long Island, where the International Cricket Council has spent its money, it has bought two weeks' exclusive use of all 1,000 acres of Eisenhower Park, six scaffold grandstands, two huge blocks of hospitality boxes, four drop-in cricket pitches, enough bars, restaurants, and washrooms to service 37,000 people, and a pretzel stand. It is an impressive setup, especially given that it was built in six months. But then this is the city where they managed to build the Empire State Building in a year and 45 days.

Apart from the up-and-down pitch, the opening game went off so smoothly that by the time it was under way the local police commissioner, Patrick Ryder, said his biggest worry was whether anyone was going to come down with sunstroke. ICC staff, meanwhile, were running around trying to solve a perennial American problem and find a decent cup of tea for the people in hospitality. The one thing no one had thought to lay on was a hot water urn.

The only trouble is that the ICC is not just paying for facilities, it is trying to buy America's attention too. It wants to develop new markets. Right now 85% of its revenue comes from India, and it has identified the US as the one to go for. Which figures. It already has an audience here among the south Asian diaspora but, big as that group is, it is still only 5.5 million people and they are scattered across an entire continent.