USA Cricket, the Olympics and St. Louis champions
by Mark Jurgena
Well in light of last week’s column about the IFAF (American football Under-20 World championship) debacle for the United States team, I was made aware of the monumental upset by a United States team on the international stage earlier this past June.
We upset Pakistan in cricket! Like in the world championships!
Wooo!
Okay, I know as little about cricket as the rest of the United States.
But I do know Pakistan is really good at cricket…I think.
Well, a quick Google search shows the Pakistanis have won one world championship, finished runner-ups twice (including in 2022) and have three other appearances in the semifinals.
And the USA knocked them off…by five runs…in the Super Over?
No idea!
I think we won in extra innings and the score was tied at 159-159 at the end of well whatever it is called in cricket to send the game to…some type of tiebreaker.
Anyway USA! USA!
Actually we won two of our group stage matches to advance to the second round. In addition to beating Pakistan, we also beat Canada.
In our other first-round matchup, we got drilled by seven wickets (?) by eventual world champion India.
In the Super 8 round, we got blasted by South Africa, the West Indies and England.
A quick look at the ICC T20 World rankings from July 10 shows England ranked third the West Indies ranked fourth and South Africa ranked fifth in the world.
After the World Cup, Pakistan dropped to number seven and the USA is now a surprising number 18.
Awesome!
We show up right between number 17 Nepal and number 19 Oman.
If you are interested in watching a five-minute highlight video on YouTube there is one from the ICC. It’s pretty popular with 7.8 million views in the last month.
Just like flag football, cricket will be an Olympic sport at the 2028 Los Angeles games, so we have some time to start practicing.
2024 Paris Olympics
The Olympics start on Friday, July 26.
That is the date of the Opening Ceremony.
It will be shown live on NBC beginning at 12:30 p.m. that afternoon.
Locally, KSDK channel 5 from St. Louis will show it live and then again in primetime at 6:30 p.m. Central time.
The television hosts for the Opening Ceremony will be Mike Tirico, Kelly Clarkson and former NFL (and University of Tennessee) quarterback Peyton Manning.
Maria Taylor, Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb will serve remote roles.
St. Louisans win championships
In a one week span, three St. Louisans won championships.
Jayson Tatum, a Chaminade High School graduate, and his Boston Celtics teammates won the NBA Finals beating the Dallas Mavericks four games to one.
Seven days later, Tatum’s Chaminade classmate Matthew Tkachuk and his Florida Panthers won a game seven at home over the Edmonton Oilers.
That same night the Tennessee Volunteers won the Men’s baseball College World Series with a 6-5 win over Texas A&M. The head coach of the Vols is Tony Vitello who graduated from DeSmet Jesuit High School.
Three major championships for St. Louis natives!
Also, Tanner Houck, another Collinsville High School graduate, was in the MLB All-Star Game last night for the American League. However, results were unavailable at press time.
That’s pretty impressive for the Gateway city!
Oh yes, and I couldn’t close the column without a Go Vols! CWS champions!
