It has been re­port­ed that the first ever In­ter­na­tion­al crick­et match took place in Amer­i­ca and that was be­tween the US and Cana­da in 1844.

Since then there has been an ef­fort to pop­u­larise the game in Un­cle Sam's land but on­ly now through the ef­forts of ex­pats, it is hap­pen­ing.

One such man is Mo­hammed Ahmed Qureshi (MAQ), who has giv­en the game a se­ri­ous shot in the arm.

Thou­sands have gath­ered at the Cen­tral Broward Crick­et Park over the week­end to take in the very pop­u­lar Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 match­es, one man en­ter­ing will feel a great sense of sat­is­fac­tion and that is Maq.

Many of the play­ers tak­ing part in these match­es would have played in his pop­u­lar T20 tour­na­ment called the US Open which is held on an an­nu­al ba­sis, with teams vy­ing for US$100,000.

Many leagues in re­cent times have popped up around the US and all have some ini­tial link to Maq's or­gan­i­sa­tion which is called the Crick­et Coun­cil USA.

Com­ing from Pak­istan where he played crick­et at a good lev­el, the soft spo­ken Maq set­tled in Mi­a­mi many years ago and want­ed to con­tin­ue his pas­sion of play­ing. At first he grew very frus­trat­ed, as he had to con­tend with a lit­tle 'soft ball' crick­et at times. This could not cut it for him and de­cid­ed that if he want­ed to play crick­et, he had to or­gan­ise the game in the US and he start­ed his jour­ney.

There was al­ways the Unit­ed States Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion but with all the ram­blings as­so­ci­at­ed with this group, he could not de­pend on the set up.

He got some friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers who al­so came from Pak­istan and they de­cid­ed to get se­ri­ous about a league. They formed Crick­et Coun­cil USA and af­ter play­ing a lit­tle, Maq de­cid­ed to get in­to ad­min­is­tra­tion at a deep­er lev­el and make it pos­si­ble for oth­ers to play.

He said, "Crick­et is a great pas­sion for me and I al­ways want­ed the game to come alive in this great coun­try. I had to do some­thing and de­cid­ed to give it a shot.

I am so hap­py that the CPL is here, as this will prove to be a fur­ther boost that the sport can come here and sur­vive and bring joy to so many peo­ple, who would have left their place of birth thou­sands of miles away and crave for the game.

When I look at the smiles across the faces of many who can walk in­to Broward to look at crick­et, I feel a great sense of ac­com­plish­ment be­cause I know that I had at least some part to play in it." The In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) has now giv­en Maq and Crick­et Coun­cil USA ap­proval for their tour­na­ment, so in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers can come in and par­tic­i­pate in the US Open and face no sanc­tion from their lo­cal boards.

"This move by the ICC is bril­liant be­cause the top play­ers will feel com­fort­able com­ing in­to the US to take part in the US Open and this will stim­u­late the in­ter­est of many for the games. It makes no sense play­ing to­ken games here, there must be some sort of struc­ture that leads to con­ti­nu­ity in or­der for the game to catch on.

"We at Crick­et Coun­cil USA have de­cid­ed to put struc­tures in place and get de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes go­ing so that we can grow the game from the nurs­ery lev­el in or­der to en­sure the pres­ence stays."