FT. LAUDERDALE – The day 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.
Then at 8 pm Nino DiLoreto, Emmy Award winning former TV producer and host, moderated the Webcast of the Teams Draft for the Championship, at which ACC strategic partner BIG League USA CEO Salman Ahmed, impeccably attired as usual, made the announcement that a deal was close to complete 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, the presentation was perfect!” Adil Bhatti (MC)”Awesone 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 !!!!! “
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 taken with the webcast of last year’s Championship
Semis and Finals. Large as the USA cricket audience is, it has always focused on
International cricket.
This year American College Cricket and BIG League USA will provide cricket fans in the USA, Canada and the rest of the world, with something they don’t get much of – lots of opportunities to view cricket action free, all over the country as
an audience is built for the domestic game.
From the 2010 Championship ACC 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, 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 go to, and find the audience by broadcasting.
The LIVE VIDEO broadcast schedule for the 2011 American College Cricket Spring Break Championship for the Chanderpaul Trophy is :
March 15th Wed 8pm – Live Webcast of the Opening Ceremony at American College
Cricket Stadium, Ft Lauderdale.
March 19th Sat – 8am to 9 pm – Live Webcast of 4 games at the Stadium
March 19th Sat – 9pm- Live Webcast of the BIG American College Cricket Awards Night – honoring the best of College Cricket of the past 2 years.
March 20th Sun- 9am- Live Webcast 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 U, Ohio State U, St Cloud State ,U of Houston, George Washington U,Mc Gill 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 U
