In some ways the tournament is making a ‘slow’ start with star players only arriving a few days before the opening games but in other areas the pace could not be more frenetic. I haven’t seen the venues in Florida and Dallas but the two hours I spent at the Eisenhower Park Stadium on Long Island this morning were breath-taking.
The sheer enormity of the task only becomes apparent when you see it. Entire nations may have less scaffolding than has been used in this construction. This pop-up stadium will hold more people than the Wanderers and Lord’s. Let that sink in for a moment.
No, they won’t all be sitting in bucket-seats in uncovered grandstands. There is capacity for almost 6000 VIP tickets enjoying luxury seating, pampered service and fine dining. Or fine snacking, given it’s T20. Lobster tails on a cocktail stick.
The numbers are astronomical to those of us unaccustomed to big corporate sports gigs. My self-invited tour of the venue, with fresh accreditation around my neck, left me talking to many people who have been involved for months. Several of whom, hilariously, still had no idea what they would see – if they saw anything – while loading swordfish or Chardonnay into the kitchen suites.
Security staff were impeccably polite, not having any idea what it was they were securing, and only became semi-virulent when I attempted to have a look at the Adelaide-grown drop-in pitches were only laid three weeks ago. “You can look at anything else, but apparently I can’t let you go there,” said Vic in a New York accent so ‘New York’ you wondered whether it was real.
Inspection completed and breath-taken, an unplanned urge to push-on toward the city was irresistible. A few hours in New York might help crush the jet-lag. Besides, South Africa were spending the day travelling from Florida and wouldn’t even arrive until the evening. It’s a 30-minute walk to the nearest Long Island Rail Road station (there will be special buses during the games) and then 45 minutes on the train.
Just a quick trip, I thought. Get a sense of it, the Big Apple. But it sucked me in like a feather to a hoover. That’s what happens to first-timers, apparently, unless they react oppositely and flee from the energy. Disembarking at Penn Station I emerged on 33rd Street and saw the Empire State Building. 25 Minutes later I was foreboding all thoughts of exchange-rates and paying the $50 to go to the 86th floor.
It wasn’t just worth it for the views, which were extraordinary, it was for the history of the construction and what it meant for the future of architecture and the boundaries of building achievement, brilliantly illustrated, which made it money reasonably spent. And The King Kong bit. That was good. Younger viewers may need to Google that.
Then came Times Square. What a soothing shock of unstoppable, uncontrollable energy. Apparently it’s supposed to overwhelm or energise you, but I found it powerfully relaxing, oddly. Maybe because I knew I had the intensely picket-fenced, suburbia East Meadow to return to. With tricycling children and fenceless neighbours helping each other with mail and garbage bins.
This is a going to be a memorable trip. And the cricket might even be good, too.
Great intro to the ‘cricket comes to the Big Apple’