Napa Valley Cricket Club to host the US launch of Last Man Stands

The Napa Valley Cricket Club will host the opening day of the Last Man Stands USA launch weekend this coming Saturday 18th October at the Fairgrounds in Calistoga. Last Man Stands is the widest reaching amateur cricket league in the world with over 2000 teams playing the format globally. The format is T20 (Twenty20), 8-a-side and games last around 2 hours. LMS is played by the normal laws of cricket but with a few extra rules to make the game more inclusive, exciting and quicker!

The LMS launch weekend will consist of two-days play between four teams at both the Fairgrounds in Calistoga and Piper Park in Larkspur. In addition to the Napa Valley and Marin teams taking part there will be an “all-star” team from the South Bay and Compton Cricket Club who will be travelling from Los Angeles. To add a further draw to the weekend England international cricketer, Nick Compton, who will be flying in from England for the weekend, will captain Compton CC.

The success of LMS in a number of other countries including the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Bangladesh has lead the founders Bjorn Briggs and Wayne Greve to look at launching LMS in America. “We’re aware that cricket’s popularity is growing rapidly in the United States” said Greve “and we thought the time was right to launch Last Man Stands here. Northern California is a hot-bed of cricketing activity with numerous leagues and a strong social cricket scene and that’s why we chose Napa Valley to host the opening day of our launch weekend.”

“We are excited to be at the forefront of LMS cricket in the US” said Napa Valley CC President Phil Bourke “I think this shorter and faster format will make cricket in Napa Valley more accessible to newcomers to the game as well as those brought up playing it.”

There will be four games of cricket at the Fairgrounds on Saturday starting at 9:00am as Napa Valley CC play the South Bay all-star team of “Raj’s Rasta Rebels” with further games at 11:15am, 1:30pm and 3:45pm when Napa Valley plays Compton. On Sunday the weekend’s game move to Piper Park in Larkspur, the home of Marin Cricket Club, with the first game there at 9:30am. You can see the full schedule here.

After this weekend’s games are complete the Last Man Stands North American Championship will launch the following weekend and will feature four separate Californian Divisions. In addition to a North Bay Division featuring Napa Valley CC there will be a Silicon Valley, Central Valley and Los Angeles Division. After a series of games through October and November there will ultimately be one champion from these four divisions that will represent the USA at the 2015 Last Man Stands World Championships in Barbados next spring.

Admission to games this Saturday at the Fairgrounds in Calistoga is free and spectators are welcomed and asked to bring a chair, a cooler and a sense of adventure!