Sunday March 6th started with the George Vecsey New York Times column featuring Lloyd Jodah, American College Cricket President and NYU-Poly players, including captain Adrian Gordon, discussing the World Cup and the 2011 American College Cricket Spring Break Championship. The NY Times website enjoys over 30 million unique hits per month, so this was quite an achievement.
NY Times writer George Vecsey (far right), Lloyd Jodah (2nd from right), with NYU-Poly cricketers including Adrian Gordon with ball. Photo courtesy of American College Cricket
Then at 8 pm Nino DiLoreto, Emmy Award winning former TV producer and host on English and Spanish TV, hosted the Web cast of the Teams Draft for the Championship at the CBRP Cricket Stadium in Ft Lauderdale. DiLoreto’s TV resume is long and impressive and includes an Emmy Award winning stint in Connecticut news reporting, a Caribbean focused show, Spanish language TV, fashion, and cricket.
ACC strategic partner BIG League USA CEO Salman Ahmed, impeccably attired as usual, made the announcement that a deal was close to finalized to broadcast the Championship Finals on 3 TV channels! Truly a momentous day for cricket in America!
Hugo Scheckter (GWU) said “loved the broadcast”, Rahul Potgun (Auburn) raved “the broadcast was awesome, and the presentation was perfect!” Adil Bhatti (MC)”Awesome job!”
Ammar Khan (GMU) gushed,” Great presentation. I watched with my mom and dad and they got all excited about GMU being in the group of death! I can’t wait for it to start!” Anand Patel, “we are ready….let’s go UMBC!!!!!,” Rahul Chadha (Texas Tech), “the Web cast was great.” Ian Carlin (Wooster), “Great show!”
These were just a few of the rave reviews for this installment of American College Cricket’s efforts to bring a cricket audience to domestic USA cricket – the first step having been the web cast of last year’s Championship Semis and Finals. Large as the USA cricket audience is, it has only focused on International cricket.
This year American College Cricket and BIG League USA will provide cricket fans in the USA and Canada with something they don’t get much of – opportunities to view cricket action free, all over the country as an audience is built for the domestic game.
“From the beginning we focused on putting together a tight, TV-ready tournament to be broadcast to cricket fans on their computer or TV, in dorms, homes, Starbucks or wherever they may be. TV has a broader demographic so we have to be on TV, but the average college student views everything on their computer. Nice as it is to have spectators in the stands, it’s more important to find the audience, and take it to them, by broadcasting free,” explained Jodah.
The LIVE VIDEO broadcast schedule for the 2011 American College Cricket Spring Break Championship for the Chanderpaul Trophy is:
March 15th TUES 8pm – Live Web cast of the Opening Ceremony at American College Cricket Stadium, Ft Lauderdale.
March 19th Sat – 8am to 6 pm – Live Web cast of 3 games at the Stadium
March 19th Sat – 9pm- Live Web cast of the BIG American College Cricket Awards Night – honoring the best of College Cricket of the past 2 years.
March 20th Sun- 9am- Live Web cast of the Semis (2 games)
March 20th Sun- 6pm- TV broadcast of the Finals, on possibly 3 channels to be announced.
Assisting host and show producer DiLoreto in drawing and announcing the teams were the lovely Krista from Florida International University and Cecelia from Broward College.
GROUP A – the toughest of the groups, North Carolina State U, York University, University of Maryland (BC), George Mason U, Florida International U, U of Central Florida, College of Wooster and U of Pennsylvania.
GROUP B
Auburn University, Ohio State U, St Cloud State ,U of Houston, George Washington U, McGill U, U of Florida, U of Tampa.
GROUP C
Rutgers U, Montgomery College, NYU-Poly, Texas A & M, Florida Atlantic U, Cleveland State U, NJ Institute of Technology and U of South Florida.
GROUP D
U of Southern California, U of Iowa, Penn State ,Texas Tech, U of Minnesota, Thunderbird School of Global Management, and Boston University.