Oakland Coliseum Welcomes Bay Area Fans for Major League Cricket Final
American cricketer Sanjay Krishnamurthi recalled watching a baseball game at the Oakland Coliseum a few years back, when the Athletics were still playing there.
“And I remember thinking, it would be really cool if cricket could be like this someday,” the 23-year-old San José State University student said. “It happened sooner than expected.”
Krishnamurthi plays for the San Francisco Unicorns, a Major League Cricket franchise that has existed since 2023. For the first two seasons, with no “home field” available, the team had to play all of its games outside California. After the A’s left for West Sacramento, the Unicorns moved to the Coliseum — injecting new life into a venue hurting for major or professional sports teams, and seen in many ways as a symbol for Oakland’s trials and transformations.
Oakland approved new terms for the $125 million sale of its stake in the Coliseum on Monday. Although plans are still uncertain, the new owners, the Oakland Acquisition Company, an affiliate of the African American Sports and Entertainment Group, have indicated they want the space to become a destination for musical artists.
For now, the massive edifice at 7000 Coliseum Way is still functioning as the home of the Oakland Roots soccer team for the rest of this season and as the site for the national playoffs for the MLC. The final game on Saturday will pit the Los Angeles Knight Riders against the Washington Freedom.
Over the past two seasons, while the Unicorns have been at the Coliseum, Krishnamurthi has invited a lot of his buddies who didn’t grow up watching the game to give it a try.
“Cricket sells itself,” he said. “Once people see and understand the game in person, it brings fans in.”
This version of cricket, which is called T-20, is not the one many of us are vaguely familiar with from British novels and Masterpiece Theater. The games take about three hours, not three days, and the players are not wearing baggy white flannels but brightly colored uniforms — orange for the Unicorns, purple for the Knight Riders — with logos splashed across the front.
It’s fast-paced and high-scoring — if you’re annoyed by a soccer match that may end in a 0-0 tie, check out the box score of Thursday’s game, where the Washington Freedom spoiled the Unicorns’ hopes for the championship — 238/6 to 231/6.
“In cricket, you can score 360 degrees. You can score behind yourself,” Liam Plunkett, part of the broadcast team for Major League Cricket, said on Sunday. “You don’t run the bases, you run back and forth. And if you do hit the equivalent of a home run — a six — you stay batting.
“If you’ve got a batsman who’s hot on that day, he stays there and keeps batting,” he said. “Sometimes you get guys who hit the equivalent of 15 home runs in one game.”
Plunkett played for the Unicorns last year, but at age 41, decided it was time to retire, although he did sign a limited contract to play baseball for the Oakland Ballers for a couple of games on cricket off-days. That gives him some room to compare and contrast the two games.
The MLC season is short — just one month separates the first of 34 games from the championship this year. Unicorns CEO David White said cricket watchers are used to that and follow their favorite players through various leagues around the world.
“Even the most avid cricket fan is very impressed when they get to an MLC match and see the quality of players we have,” he said. “Our team alone has five or six players who’ve just come in from the Indian Premier League, stars from all over the world, Pakistan, India, Australia, South Africa, you name it.”
Although the Unicorns are branded as “San Francisco,” a lot of the South Asian American fanbase lives in the South Bay, and Oakland is just as convenient for them.
The unusually spacious dimensions of the Coliseum’s playing field, designed to accommodate both football and baseball, make it work for cricket, too.
“We checked every sports field available, and this is the only one [in the United States] with the dimensions big enough to play cricket,” MLC Tournament Director Justin Geale said.
Other than the fields that were designed especially for cricket, of course, including the new home of the Los Angeles Knight Riders in Pomona. That field will also be used in 2028 when cricket returns to the Olympics after a 128-year absence.
The Unicorns intend to build their own permanent facility somewhere in the Bay Area. They spent a few years negotiating with Santa Clara County for a site on the fairgrounds, but that plan has fallen through.
White said the team has some good leads, but nothing firm yet. He hopes to return to the Coliseum for 2027, but the sale on Monday makes that uncertain.
Krishamurthi and Plunkett said they won’t ever forget their time in Oakland, and Geale said he got goosebumps just stepping onto the field.
“You know, I watched the film Moneyball 100 times,” Geale said. “The Oakland Raiders would play NFL football right here. For me to be able to walk out here, a kid from Australia who never thought he’d be in America, is amazing.”
White said he expects Saturday’s final will have the largest crowd in MLC’s brief history, perhaps in excess of 10,000 attendees. He said the team is planning live South Asian music, fireworks and even a version of one of the Coliseum’s greatest traditions — tailgating.