Danbury Making a Case for Cricket Featuring Flat Bats and Wickets

It was a Thursday evening at Danbury's Ethan Allen Hotel. The Premium English Cricket Club and the American Premier League (APL) gathered together over cocktails, dinner, and dancing to welcome a new team called the 'English Team' to the APL.

Just wait one minute! Are you telling me that the sport of Cricket has invaded this great country of ours?! Where the hell have I been for the last 216 years when the game was introduced to the United States?

I have a lot of questions, but first, let's get back to this past Thursday at the
Ethan Allen Inn, where the announcement was made that the new 'English Team' franchise will become a part of the APL and will feature players from England and the United States.

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The back story begins with Victoria Morgan, an executive at Boehringer-Ingelheim, who purchased the 'English Team' last month that will play this September in the American Premiere League with hopes of elevating the popularity of the sport in the United States.  

I have no idea how the game is played, so I launched YouTube to see what I could find. That's when my head almost exploded! Are you kidding me with wickets, flat bats, two batters at a time running in opposite directions? If you hit the ball on a bounce to the outer boundary of the field, you score four runs. Four runs?! And then there's something about 'hitting the stump?' I am so confused!

At Thursday's event, covered by Hearst Connecticut Media, Jay Mir, who grew up in Pakistan and fell in love with the sport, is the founder and CEO of the American Premiere League and talked about a cricket revolution in the United States. Seriously, the beauty of Cricket is that it's enjoyed by fans all over the world.