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How cricket has exploded in popularity in the U.S.
Bowie, Maryland — In a field in Bowie, Maryland, a group of kids are playing a game unfamiliar to most Americans, cricket.
“When I first started playing, my mom was like, ‘girl what are you doing?'” said 13-year-old Jordyn Hinkle-Walker.
Hinkle-Walker had never even heard of the game until three years ago, when coach Sham Chotoo brought cricket to her classroom.
“I called up the principal and said, ‘Hey, I would like to come to the school and do a cricket demo,'” Chotoo told CBS News.
And the reaction from the students was immediate.
“It was crazy,” Chotoo said. “You see they would get so excited, and you see their whole faces would light up.”
Chotoo grew up playing the game in Trinidad and Tobago, and has made it his mission to share the sport in the U.S. since moving here 30 years ago.
“Back then, it was mainly the immigrant population playing cricket,” Chotoo said. “It was a fun way to get together.”
Then, when he had children, Chotoo wanted to share this piece of his culture with them.
“And I said, well, why don’t I start a cricket program here,” Chotoo said.
That program became the first elementary school cricket league in the U.S. Now, over a decade later, his program has 86 teams and more than 1,000 children playing cricket.
Nationwide, the sport is exploding from coast-to-coast. According to USA Cricket, the sport’s governing body, more than 400 leagues have opened in America, with over 200,000 players and counting.
“It’s truly a watershed moment for cricket in this country,” cricket reporter Smit Patel said.
Patel predicts more aggressive growth of the sport in the U.S. Last year, Major League Cricket debuted in the U.S. And cricket will be featured at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
“It’s the second most played sport in the world,” Patel said. “The potential is immense.”
This month, for the first time, the U.S. is co-hosting and competing in the International Cricket Council’s Men’s T20 World Cup.
“I believe the World Cup is going to act as a catalyst, the same way the FIFA World Cup acted as a catalyst in 1994,” Patel said.
And on Thursday, the U.S. made major headlines when it pulled off a stunning upset defeat of Pakistan. And on Sunday, India and Pakistan will square off in the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York, a 34,000-seat, $30 million temporary stadium built for the T20 World Cup.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
So now, with the world watching and a pathway to go pro here in America, young cricketers can dream bigger than ever before.
“Now I can say, you know what, you can be a professional cricket player, you can earn a living by playing in the Major League Cricket program here in the U.S.,” Chotoo said.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill Saturday that would have required new cars to beep at drivers if they exceed the speed limit in an effort to reduce traffic deaths.
California would have become the first to require such systems for all new cars, trucks and buses sold in the state starting in 2030. The bill would have mandated that vehicles beep at drivers when they exceed the speed limit by at least 10 mph.
The European Union has passed similar legislation to encourage drivers to slow down. California’s proposal would have provided exceptions for emergency vehicles, motorcycles and motorized scooters.
In explaining his veto, Newsom said federal law already dictates vehicle safety standards and adding California-specific requirements would create a patchwork of regulations.
The National Highway Traffic Safety “is also actively evaluating intelligent speed assistance systems, and imposing state-level mandates at this time risks disrupting these ongoing federal assessments,” the Democratic governor said.
Opponents, including automotive groups and the state Chamber of Commerce, said such regulations should be decided by the federal government, which earlier this year established new requirements for automatic emergency braking to curb traffic deaths. Republican lawmakers also said the proposal could make cars more expensive and distract drivers.
The legislation would have likely impacted all new car sales in the U.S., since the California market is so large that car manufacturers would likely just make all of their vehicles comply.
California often throws that weight around to influence national and even international policy. The state has set its own emission standards for cars for decades, rules that more than a dozen other states have also adopted. And when California announced it would eventually ban the sale of new gas-powered cars, major automakers soon followed with their own announcement to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles.
Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, who sponsored the bill, called the veto disappointing and a setback for street safety.
“California should have led on this crisis as Wisconsin did in passing the first seatbelt mandate in 1961,” Wiener said in a statement. “Instead, this veto resigns Californians to a completely unnecessary risk of fatality.”
The speeding alert technology, known as intelligent speed assistance, uses GPS to compare a vehicle’s pace with a dataset of posted limits. If the car is at least 10 mph over, the system emits a single, brief, visual and audio alert.
The proposal would have required the state to maintain a list of posted speed limits, and it’s likely that those would not include local roads or recent changes in speed limits, resulting in conflicts.
The technology has been used in the U.S. and Europe for years. Starting in July, the European Union will require all new cars to have the technology, although drivers would be able to turn it off. At least 18 manufacturers including Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan, have already offered some form of speed limiters on some models sold in America, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 10% of all car crashes reported to police in 2021 were related to speeding. This was especially a problem in California, where 35% of traffic fatalities were speeding-related — the second highest in the country, according to a legislative analysis of the proposal.
Last year the NTSB recommended federal regulators require all new cars to alert drivers when they speed. Their recommendation came after a crash in January 2022, when a man with a history of speeding violations ran a red light at more than 100 mph and struck a minivan, killing himself and eight other people.
