LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s been 126 years since cricket — the second most watched sport in the world — made an appearance in the Olympics. That’s about to change in 2028.
On Wednesday, shovels hit the ground in Pomona, a city in the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, where construction has begun for a 10,000-plus capacity premier cricket stadium. It will serve as the venue for men’s and women’s games, played by six teams in each competition.
The stadium is being erected in the Fairplex fairgrounds as the home of the Los Angeles Knight Riders, a professional Major League Cricket team owned by the Mumbai-based Knight Riders Sports. The company is co-led by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.
The groundbreaking kicked off with a “bhumi pujan,” a ritual rooted in Hindu tradition, which often marks the start of a construction project as a way of seeking divine blessings and forgiveness for disturbing the earth.
Cricket is already woven into the cultural fabric of U.S. diaspora communities from all over the world, particularly South Asia, where it is followed with religious fervor. In the U.S., cricket fans, coaches and players view a dedicated cricket stadium in a major sports market like Southern California as a huge milestone.
Investors hope momentum from local major league cricket games carries into the Olympics, taking the sport to a mainstream American sports audience. Many also believe that this newfound visibility will help carve out promisin …