The American Cricket Team

[Vanhalen 0]

USA captain Richard Staple was content with his team's achievements as they were sent home from the ICC Champions Trophy with defeat to Australia.

"We just have to keep our heads up high because we were playing against the best team in the world," he said.

 

"There are positives in that we learned from the way these guys play and that was one of our main objectives.

 

"We didn't realistically expect to beat these teams - we just wanted to see how we would match up against them."

 

The Americans lost two wickets in the first two overs and struggled to cope with the pace of the Australians.

 

Only Steve Massiah, with 23, got into double figures as the US crashed out for a tournament record low 65.

 

"Their bowling attack is the best in the world so we weren't looking to go out there and blast these guys about and they really didn't give us anything to blast," Staple continued.

 

"We didn't really get a start at all apart from Massiah. They came right at us from the beginning and we were never able to recover.

 

"It was always going to be tough when you're down five wickets for less that 40 runs and they just ran right through us at the end."

 

Staple, an estate agent, returns to work on Monday morning, and his side's next target will be the ICC Trophy in Ireland next July.

 

"It's very important for US cricket that we do well in that tournament and qualify for the World Cup," he added.

 

"One of the things we wanted to achieve with this tournament televised nationally was to introduce the sport to a national audience and hopefully get more interest than there is already."

[CanadianChris 0]

The US has a cricket team?

 

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

I have never seen a single american, in real life, or on television, play cricket. I've never heard an american even TALK about cricket. Most of us know what it is when we see it, but that's it, probably.

[Guest Nanks]

Most of the team are actually ex-pats from cricketing nations like West Indies, India, etc.

 

The match against Australia really was a joke though. The One Day game is meant to be played with 50 overs (6 deliveries) per team. We bowled you out in 24 overs and then achieved your total in 8 overs.

 

It's great that new countries are trying to develop the game but I don't think being punished in this fashion by the Aussies & Kiwis really does anything for any of the players. There are many developing cricket nations like the US, Canada, Scotland, Netherlands, Bangladesh, etc I think it would be far more prudent to give these nations more opportunities to hone their games against each other rather than have them be fodder for the top nations once every two years.