The Unicorns bring world class cricket to Oakland Coliseum 32%
By Anne Marks43%
7/9/2026, 10:58:00 PM
Keywords: Oakland Ballers, Sports
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Halo Effect, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 13.4% saturation with 138 hits. Analysis detected 1,167 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,030 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 40.8% and a BS Rank of 32% (10,847 of 15,741 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 68.90% of the article peer group.
With the World Cup dominating headlines, American attention is on fútbol, the world’s most popular sport.
U.S. soccer fandom has come a long way, building slowly since the country hosted the pivotal 1994 World Cup.
But what about the world’s <em>second </em>most popular sport?
When will it be time for the U.S. — or at least Oakland — to get into cricket?
The San Francisco Unicorns, a Major League Cricket team who play at the Oakland Coliseum, are hoping the answer is now, and that locals will join their “Sparkle Army” of fans.
For the unfamiliar, Major League Cricket, the United States’ first professional cricket association, wasn’t founded until 2023, although the game has been played stateside since before the American Revolution.
Despite its newness, the league draws some of the best players from around the world.
The league is able to do this by timing its match schedule to occur during a month-long gap between the seasons of other well-established leagues like the Indian Premier League, Australia’s Big Bash League, South Africa’s SA20 and the Pakistan Super League.
The Unicorns were one of the original six teams; this is their second season playing in Oakland.
More than three centuries older than its cousin, American baseball, English cricket is also a bat-and-ball sport.
Rather than sprint around bases in a diamond, batters run back and forth between two wickets — sets of connected wooden posts — placed 22 yards apart.
The type of cricket played in the Unicorn’s league is “Twenty20” or T20 for short, which refers to the number of “overs” — basically at-bats of six pitches each — that each team gets.
Balls that sail over the boundaries aren’t called home runs; they’re called sixes or “sixers” because of the points they are worth.
There are typically about 10 to 15 sixers at every game.
Unlike test cricket matches that can last up to five days, or one-day international tournaments, a T20 match is more accessible to new fans, lasting only around three hours, or roughly as long as a playoff baseball game.
“People have this conception that cricket is slow,” Unicorns and US National Team cricketer Sanjay Krishnamurthi told The Oaklandside.
“T20 cricket is fast paced.
It goes by quickly.”
He said baseball fans who come to the Coliseum might be surprised by the faster pace of play.
The reverse has happened here in Oakland.
On June 26, Liam Plunkett, a retired Unicorn and 2019 Cricket World Cup champion for England, signed a one-day contract to pitch for the Oakland Ballers.
Ballers spokesperson Casey Pratt said the team had the idea to sign a cricketer to play in one of their games.
“We hit up Liam and he was instantly down," Pratt said.
Plunkett threw five pitches against the Yuba-Sutter Freebirds, including a strikeout.
It went so well, Plunkett is coming back again on July 12.
“I’m buzzing for it,” Plunkett said about returning to Raimondi.
“It’s a cool little ballpark.”
In cricket, Plunkett was known for his fast seam and off cutter bowling, pitches that have the same grip as a fastball and curveball, respectively.
But because his release point is different than a typical baseball pitcher, more overhand than sidearm, he heard from the Freebirds batters that his pitches were hard for them to track.
This Sunday, Plunkett says he will not just be pitching.
He is excited to have his first professional baseball at-bat.
The Ballers game takes place just days before the Major League Cricket playoffs kick off at the Coliseum.
The top four teams in the league will face off in matches next Wednesday and Thursday, July 15 and 16, to determine who will fight for the championship on July 18.
This is the first time that the league’s playoffs will be held in Oakland.
Plunkett says he’s pulling for the Unicorns, who were first place in the standings leading into this week’s matches at Grand Prairie Cricket Stadium near Dallas, home of the Texas Super Kings — but it is all about who has a high run rate on the day.
Oakland hosting the championship is one step toward the state of California briefly becoming the center of the cricket world in 2028, when cricket will be played at the Olympic Games for the first time since 1900 with Los Angeles as host.
The cricket ground where Olympic matches will be staged just opened last week in Pomona, outside of Los Angeles.
Those grounds are now home to Major League Cricket team the Knight Riders, co-owned by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.
The International Cricket Council estimates that there are 2.5 billion cricket fans across the globe, 30 million of whom are in the United States.
While the sport is English in origin, and popular in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the West Indies, an estimated 90% of cricket’s global fanbase comes from the Indian subcontinent.
Within the U.S., it is the South Asian diaspora that is driving cricket viewership.
Unicorns star Krishnamurthi moved to the Bay Area six years ago with his family and went on to attend college at San Jose State.
He is, in his own words, “a Bay Area boy” who watched baseball at the Coliseum long before playing cricket on the field there.
But he said his cricket development took place when he joined an academy in India after his family moved there when he was 8 years old.
“Cricket is mainly a South Asian sport at the moment,” he said.
“Tapping into those fans will grow the sport” here.
Although they would like to lift the trophy at the end, Short said, “winning and losing isn’t everything.”
The Unicorns’ goal for the season, he said, is to “put on a show,” fill up the stands at the Coliseum, and grow the U.S. game.
<em>The Major League Cricket playoffs begin July 15, with a 2:30 p.m qualifier match, followed by a 6:30 p.m. eliminator match.
The semifinal match is July 16, 6:30 p.m., and the championship match is July 18, 4:30 p.m., all at the Oakland Coliseum, 7000 S.
Coliseum Way, Oakland. </em><em>Tickets start at $26.25</em><em>.</em>
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