POMONA, CALIFORNIA — The groundbreaking of the Los Angeles Knight Riders’ new home on Wednesday drew the expected mix of speakers for a major US cricket infrastructure announcement: the franchise’s CEO, the venue partner, the local mayor, the LA28 sport lead, and the former mayor-turned-ambassador who had worked to bring cricket to the Olympic program. But one address, more than the others, was built to land beyond the room.
Sanjog Gupta, Chief Executive Officer of the International Cricket Council, used his remarks to frame the Knight Riders Cricket Field not just as a franchise home — though it is that — but as the foundational piece of infrastructure for cricket’s return to the Olympic Games, and for the sport’s long-term establishment in the United States.
“What we are breaking ground today is not simply a cricket field,” Gupta told the gathering. “We are breaking ground on a promise — a promise that took 128 years to keep.”
A broadcaster turned administrator
Gupta took charge at the ICC on July 7, 2025, becoming the seventh Chief Executive Officer in the governing body’s history. His appointment, by the ICC’s own framing, was a pivotal one: he arrived with more than two decades in broadcasting, most recently as CEO of JioStar Sports, where he oversaw the integration of Viacom18 and Disney Star into what became one of the largest sports media platforms in the world and by far the most significant one in cricket.
At JioStar, and before that at Star India — which he joined in 2010 and where he rose to Head of Sports in 2020 — Gupta spearheaded broadcast innovations that reshaped how Indian audiences consumed cricket, including multi-language feeds, digital-first storytelling formats, and technology-led coverage of the IPL and ICC global events. His mandate at the ICC, per the council’s public framing, spans three priorities: growing cricket in emerging markets, strengthening the sport’s three formats, and delivering cricket’s Olympic debut at Los Angeles 2028. The Pomona event placed him squarely at the intersection of all three.
The 128-year promise
Central to Gupta’s address was the long arc — the fact that cricket, in his words, “a game played and passionately followed by more than 2.5 billion people,” has been absent from the Olympic stage since 1900. The IOC’s formal approval of cricket for LA28, announced at the Mumbai Session in October 2023, closed that gap.
Gupta framed the approval as substantive rather than procedural. “It wasn’t just a scheduling or programming announcement,” he said. “It was a recognition — that the Olympics should reflect the sport that billions of people love, not just the sports that history has been kind to.” For unfamiliar audiences, he offered a quick orienting line: “The ICC, for those of you who don’t understand it, is the FIFA for cricket.”
He positioned Pomona as the right site for that recognition to take physical form. “I really can’t imagine a better venue than Pomona for the coming together of this promise,” he said, framing the Fairplex site — a century-old community gathering place built around the LA County Fair — as thematically aligned with cricket itself. “The best things in sport genuinely happen when ambition meets community. And Pomona is both.”
“The nursery for the sport’s future in this country”
The most pointed line in Gupta’s remarks — and the one most likely to shape the future of the sport in the host country — described what the Knight Riders Cricket Field represents as US cricket infrastructure.
“The Knight Riders Group — owners of cricket franchises across India, the Caribbean, the UAE, and the United States — has made a bold declaration by establishing their official home ground here,” Gupta said, “with a clear view to positioning this region as a future hub for cricket in America, to build this as the nursery for the sport’s future in this country, and to bring together the massive cricket community from across the nation.”
The “nursery” framing is appropriate. Infrastructure has long been identified — in ICC research, in MLC operational planning, and in successive US Olympic bid efforts — as one of the structural barriers to cricket’s American scale-up. That a global T20 franchise is financing the first privately owned, purpose-built, tournament-standard cricket is itself a signal about where commercial confidence in the US market sits.
The Olympic moment as cultural moment
Gupta’s address also reached beyond the narrowly sporting implications of LA28. Cricket’s inclusion, he argued, is as much a cultural event as a sporting one — a chance for the sport to introduce itself to audiences that may not have encountered it before.
“When the LA28 Games take place in July 2028, the eyes of four billion Olympic viewers will be on Los Angeles,” he said. “And many of those will be on Fairplex Pomona, and on cricket for the first time. This is not just a sporting moment. It’s a cultural one — the moment cricket introduces itself properly to many parts of the world, including this country.”
He closed on a note that deliberately stepped outside the commercial framing that now dominates much cricket-business discussion. “The Olympics remind us why sport matters,” he said. “Not the commerce of it, not the broadcast numbers, not the franchise valuations — which are the trending topic these days. Though all of those are real and important, the Olympics remind us that sport at its highest expression is an exchange between nations, between cultures, between communities. Cricket has been having that exchange for more than a century and a half. Two years from now, at this very ground, it will finally have it on the world’s biggest sporting stage.”
Gupta’s closing line served as the rhetorical pivot of the full program. “Today, we are building this ground,” he said. “In 2028, we will be building the future for a sport, and for what will potentially become a culture in this country.”
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Full transcript: Sanjog Gupta remarks, Knight Riders Cricket Field groundbreaking, Fairplex, Pomona — April 22, 2026
To the mayor and council of Pomona, to our friends from LA28, Niccolò Campriani, to the Knight Riders Group, and my dear friend for more than a decade, Venky Mysore, whose passion in many ways drives this endeavor. To our friends from the MLC who are also here, Vijay, Sameer, to representatives of the U.S. men’s national team, who were probably one catch away from beating the world champions in the last World Cup. To Walter Marquez and the entire Fairplex family. To our friends from the media, officials, well-wishers, who’ve gathered here today for this moment.
It’s a remarkable day, and you are standing very close to a remarkable piece of ground. Thank you for being here. And thank you for being a part of a moment that will truly be a moment you’ll remember in history.
Because what we are breaking ground today is not simply a cricket field. We are breaking ground on a promise, a promise that took 128 years to keep. That’s how long the world’s second most popular sport, a game played and passionately followed by more than 2.5 billion people, has been missing from the Olympic stage.
When the International Olympic Committee formally approved cricket’s inclusion in the Los Angeles 2028 games, a decision that sent waves of joy across the cricketing world, it wasn’t just a scheduling or programming announcement. It was a recognition.
A recognition that the Olympics should reflect the sport that billions of people loved, not just the sports that history has been kind to. And the ICC, the international governing council, for those of you who don’t understand it, it’s the FIFA for cricket, we humbly accepted that recognition with our full commitment. And now we are here today.
And I really can’t imagine a better venue than Pomona for the coming together of this promise. Because the best things in sport genuinely happen when ambition meets community. And Pomona is both.
This site has served the people of Los Angeles County as the home of the LA County Fair as a gathering for trade, culture, celebration. There’s something very fitting every time that we look towards the field, almost poetic about the fact that a venue built on the idea of community coming together will now host a sport that, at its very core, is all about community. I also want to acknowledge the role of the Los Angeles Knight Riders, and their sheer determination towards making this promise possible.
The Knight Riders group — owners, as Venky said, of cricket franchises across India, Caribbean, the UAE, and the United States — has made a bold declaration by establishing their official home ground here, with a clear view to positioning this region as a future hub for cricket in America, to build this as the nursery for the sport’s future in this country, and to bring together the massive cricket community from across the nation. Cricket today reaches more than 2.5 billion people globally across all five continents. It is the dominant sport across South Asia, the Caribbean, parts of Africa, and across the United Kingdom, Oceania, and the Middle East.
When the LA28 games take place in July 2028, the eyes of four billion Olympic viewers will be on Los Angeles. And many of those will be on Fairplex Pomona, and on cricket for the first time. This is not just a sporting moment. It’s a cultural one. The moment cricket introduces itself properly to many parts of the world, including this country.
I want to conclude by mentioning that the Olympics also remind us why sport matters. Not the commerce of it, not the broadcast numbers, not the franchise valuations, which are the trending topic these days.
Though all of those are real and important, the Olympics remind us that sport at its highest expression is an exchange between nations, between cultures, between communities. Cricket has been having that exchange for more than a century and a half. Two years from now, at this very ground, it will finally have it on the world’s biggest sporting stage.
Today, we are building this ground. In 2028, we will be building the future for a sport, and for what will potentially become a culture in this country. And as the ICC, we are wholeheartedly committed, and we want to support every endeavor to take this sport to the next level in this country, and on the back of LA28 around the world. Thank you.
