USA Cricket Update: OMG we made the second round

The big win over Pakistan and a little bit of rain allowed Team USA cricket to advance to the next round of the T20 World Cup. What's next?

It’s another beautiful morning in the United States of America, a certified Cricket Country. Team USA’s journey at the T20 World Cup continues today, with a matchup against South Africa at 10:30 a.m. Eastern.

Clearly, people only want to read me writing about cricket. My post on the win over Pakistan was a featured Substack Reads, I wrote about USA-India for GQ… and I might be working on some other cricket content. (Winky emoji.) (Eyes emoji.)

So I figured I’d provide an update on where the team is at, and where they’re headed. The game starts pretty soon so get reading! (You can probably read during the game—cricket matches have a lot of downtime.)

What has Team USA been up to since beating Pakistan?

They lost to India, the favorites to win the tournament, although the game was closer than expected. Team USA batted poorly and dropped a key ball which would’ve gotten one of India’s best batsmen out… and still, there was still an open question of who would win about 80 percent of the way through the match. That’s not bad!

Then their game against Ireland was rained out. In baseball, you’d have to find a new date to replay that match. In cricket, there are no make-up games, and everybody get a point in the standings for rainouts. After the wins against Canada and Pakistan, the rainout was all Team USA needed to advance, sending Pakistan packing. And now we’re on to the Super 8s.

It was a phenomenal collaboration between American cricketers, American weather, and most importantly, poor American planning: The rain actually wasn’t that heavy on the day of the Ireland match, but the stadium had drainage issues, didn’t have enough tarps to cover the entire ground, and the Super Sopper machine responsible for drying the field ran out of gas and broke down. It’s just nice that our decaying infrastructure finally paid off and helped us rack a big W for once. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Could we have beaten Ireland? Probably—the Irish were winless in their other three matches, and performed worse against all three opponents than Team USA. But why bother when you can let American rain win the day?

What are the “Super 8s?”

It’s essentially the quarterfinals of the tournament. But instead of playing a single-elimination bracket, the final 8 teams are divided into two groups, who play each other in a round robin. The USA is in Group B with England, South Africa, and the West Indies. The top two teams advance to the semifinals.

I assumed at first the Super 8 was a reference to the motel chain, or the type of film, or the J.J. Abrams movie named after the type of film, but nope: Past editions of the T20 World Cup featured the Super 12s and Super 10s depending on how many teams went through to the second round in those formats.

Are Americans falling in love with cricket yet?

Americans as a whole? Unclear. But cricket journalist Peter Della Panna did meet a guy named Chuck at the USA-Ireland rainout in USA overalls and a star-spangled cowboy hat, saying “I saw they beat Pakistan. I saw they're coming to Florida. Fuck, I need a fucking ticket! I gotta support the boys!” So at least one convert has been made.

What is the international reaction to Team USA’s success?

You know how every time there’s a big NCAA Tournament upset, people go on LinkedIn and find that the star player for the 15-seed had a funny internship while his opponents were prepping for the NBA Draft? Well, we’re the 15-seed, and our “going pro in something other than sports” guy is Saurabh Netravalkar, whose job as a software engineer at Oracle has made headlines from Manhattan to Mumbai.

I also get real “NCAA Tournament upset” vibes from the fact that while people are modestly rejoicing in America’s success… they really seem more fired up about Pakistan’s shock exit. There’s a running clock on celebrating Mercer, but Duke losing is timeless.

Oh yeah! Oracle guy! How’s he doing?

Pretty well! When I covered the USA-India game, a cricket reporter asked Netravalkar about being the “flavor of the season,” which is a phrase I’m going to use from now on. Against India he bowled out Virat Kohli—the all-time leading run-scorer at the T20 World Cup and an international superstar with 250 million Instagram followers—and Rohit Sharma.

Off the pitch, one of his fellow Oracle coworkers screenshotted his Slack OOO message revealing that his initial leave request ended on the 16th, after the first round of the tournament, but he’s apparently been able to extend his leave through the Super 8s. Apparently none of his teammates were offended that his PTO request had relatively low expectations for the team’s performance.

What about you, Rodger? How are you doing?

Thanks for asking, Bold Text Questions Guy!

I had a great time attending Ireland-Canada as a fan, an incredible time covering USA-India as a journalist, and ever since I figured out that Willow TV is part of my cable package, I’ve watched most of the World Cup games.

I still don’t know all the rules—for example, I was surprised when Team USA received a five run penalty for taking too long between overs against India. But then again, Team USA seemed pretty surprised by that too, so I don’t feel to bad about it.

Honestly, don’t care. I was just asking to be polite.

Rude, Bold Text Questions Guy! But yeah, we should move on.

Can Team USA advance?

It’s going to be tough.

They’re in a group with England, South Africa, and the West Indies, teams that combined to go 10-1 in the group stages. You’d feel much better if Team USA were on the other side of the bracket with Australia, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, a team the USA beat in a best-of-three warm-up series in May. But that’s the punishment Team USA gets for not beating India and finishing top of the group.

But at least we have home field advantage, right?

Actually, not anymore. Only 16 games in the first round were in the USA. (And three of those got rained out.) The rest of the games are spread across the West Indies. Today’s game against South Africa is in Antigua, and the rest of Team USA’s group stage games are in Barbados.

It’s a bummer for Team USA because home ground advantage is particularly important in international cricket—seemingly more so than in other sports. Everything about a cricket match comes down to how the ball bounces off the pitch, which means it’s a big advantage to be deeply familiar with how a certain track plays. And it’s not just about park-to-park differences. Many feel that international cricket teams are molded by the climatic and atmospheric conditions in their nations—the grass and soil in Australia is markedly different from the grass and soil in England, which is different from the grass and soil in India, which is different from the grass and soil in the West Indies, etc.—which means players from those nations grow up developing skill sets suited to playing on their home turf. Three of the last four Cricket World Cups were won by the host nation.

Perhaps that’s less true for Team USA, whose players hail from India and Pakistan and New Zealand and South Africa and Florida. But the pitches in the United States were clearly significantly different from the ones in the West Indies, producing much lower-scoring games in the group stages. And regardless of where they were born, Team USA had a ton of experience at the Texas site, which serves as Team USA’s home base and is home to the Major League Cricket league where most Team USA players participate in. They won both of their games in Texas, and it stands to reason their familiarity that may have given them an edge—and the opposite will be true playing the West Indies in Barbados.

Okay, but are there any teams we can beat?

Any path to the semis begins with a win over South Africa.

The Proteas went 4-0 in their group, but it wasn’t convincing at all, with two of the four wins coming against mediocre opponents at the death. They beat Bangladesh by four runs in a game in which a controversial call cost Bangladesh four runs, and required a game-saving catch at the boundary by a South African fielder. And they beat Nepal by one run on an unusual play where a Nepalese batsman on the brink of scoring the tying run stopped running after a throw hit him in the back. And their win against the Netherlands was much tighter than expected. It wouldn’t be a stunner if Team USA finished the job after Nepal and Bangladesh came so close.

Okay. Let’s say we beat South Africa. What’s our path forward?

Next up are the West Indies and England. They had the two best net run rates in the group stages, and have won four of the last six T20 World Cups.

On Friday, Team USA plays the West Indies. In Barbados. The Windies dominated all four of their group stage games and will be playing in front of a home crowd. Let’s just keep it close.

Then Sunday is a game against England in Barbados… and although we’re five days out, the forecast predicts thunderstorms in the afternoon. So let’s get a washout and a point from that match, and hope England gets wrecked by the West Indies. Then Team USA can advance past England on net run rate. Come on, rain! I’ll never get mad at you again!

Why do we play the West Indies? That’s not a country!

In a unique situation in the international sports world, players from nations all across the Caribbean band together to form the West Indies cricket team. Most of the players are from Barbados, Jamaica, or Trinidad and Tobago, but there are also players from smaller nations like St. Lucia and Grenada. All in all, 10 sovereign nations and five overseas territories are included. (Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Cayman Islands have their own teams.)

Teams from the West Indies have been playing together since the 1880s, 80 years before any Caribbean nations left British rule too form independent nations. In the 1950s, there was briefly a notion that most of the Caribbean islands would be become independent as a single country called the West Indies Federation, but even after that fell through, the region remained united in cricket.

The Windies have been a powerhouse for as long as they’ve played together, including victories in the 2012 and 2016 T20 World Cups. Since the West Indies don’t have a national anthem, they use the Calypso song “Rally Round the West Indies”, written by Trinidadian artist David Rudder about the cricket team, although they needed to adapt his original lyrics. The islands play under a maroon flag showing a wicket on a tropical island.

There have been a handful of teams representing the West Indies as a whole in other sports, but they’re only internationally recognized in cricket. In most team sports, the individual Caribbean nations are simply too small to qualify for major international events. Despite the popularity of soccer in the Caribbean, only Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago have ever managed to make the World Cup, while their smaller neighbors lose qualifying matches with lopsided scorelines. I love that in cricket, these nations get to display their passion and culture with a united team strong enough to beat the world’s best.

What’s the best case scenario for Team USA?

I think we’re already here.

Qualifying for the Super 8s has automatically given Team USA a spot in the 2026 T20 World Cup—since they got a berth simply for being the host nation this time, it’s the first time they’ve genuinely qualified for the event.

And now, they have three more chances to beat the world’s best. That in and of itself is a huge win. The cricket world is insular, and it’s hard for smaller nations to schedule or earn matches against elite opponents. Before this tournament started, Team USA had only played 28 all-time T20 international matches, mostly against lower-tier opponents like Belize and Singapore. These will be their first-ever matches against South Africa, the West Indies, and England. It’s found money.

Most of the articles about Team USA’s performance have been based on the idea that one day, America might become a nation that likes cricket. I think that framing is wrong. Sure, it’s not baseball. But with the sheer number of Americans who either immigrated or were born to immigrants from cricket-loving countries, the United States already has millions of cricket fans. The sport still needs to work on its infrastructure in America, and has yet to break through to fans not connected to the game by ancestry. But I don’t think America “needs to become” a cricket country. We already are one. And now the team has three more chances to prove it.