Cricket at the Summer Olympics
Cricket was originally scheduled to be included in the inaugural 1896 Summer Olympics, which were held in Athens; cricket would have been the only team sport held at the Games. There were, however, insufficient entries and so no event was held.
Sports in Indianapolis
Cricket is a street-level sport among the South Asian communities that live in Indianapolis. Indianapolis mayor Greg Ballard identified the international appeal of cricket after his trip to South Africa, where he watched an Indian Premier League game that had been relocated to South Africa due to terrorist tensions in India during 2009 season. He initiated construction of the Indianapolis World Sports Park and its cricket stadium to make the city a global venue for cricket games. Cricket is a popular sport among Indian and South Asian communities and Ballard said that the city has a large enough South Asian community to start a cricket village. The plans for the stadium were started in 2009. Indianapolis has one club, Cricket Club of Indianapolis, that is registered with USACA. Multiple local amateur teams play with tennis balls in central Indiana, including ones in Bloomington, Carmel, Columbus, Fishers, Fort Wayne, Kokomo, West Lafayette, and also downtown at the IUPUI campus. Indiana (Youth) cricket (INYCA) with USYCA FREE cricket equipment and education program is expanding youth and school cricket in Indiana schools and colleges. Jatin Patel of USYCA and founder of the USA Center for Excellence in Cricket introduced the nation's first cricket coaching certification program for physical education teachers in Indiana schools during 2012. INYCA is targeting a future inter-school cricket tournament. The Indianapolis World Sports Park cricket ground is the home of the ICC Americas Cricket Combine – team to play in the WICB's Nagico Super50 and 2015 ICC Americas Twenty20 Division One.