Major League Cricket headed to the Oakland Coliseum

OAKLAND, Calif. - Major League Cricket is headed to the Oakland Coliseum.

David White, CEO of the San Francisco Unicorns – a professional cricket team – told KTVU on Tuesday that his intent is to play in a June 2025 cricket tournament at the historic stadium that the Oakland A's vacated this fall. 

"We're very lucky that it's now available," White said. "I know cricket fans. I know their passion for the sport. And I know that the 35-minute drive from Fremont to Oakland is not going to be something that's going to stop them." 

He said most cricket fans in the Bay Area – many who emigrated from overseas – wake up now at 4 a.m. to watch cricket being played overseas in England, Pakistan and India. 

The Unicorns want to capitalize on the fact that there is a major South Asian influence in the Bay Area, especially in Fremont, Cupertino and other parts of Silicon Valley, and many of those are dedicated fans to a sport that is a precursor to baseball. 

"We're very confident that we'll get a good following from across the whole Bay Area," he said. "We know that they'll travel to see this." 

Right now, the Unicorns play near Dallas, Texas and Raleigh, North Carolina.

"Purely, because they've got a facility," White said. "There's no other reason right now." 

Unicorn players live all over the world and only practice together in the weeks leading up to a tournament. The Coliseum would be the home stadium for the Unicorns, who were formed in 2023.

They comprise six Major League Cricket teams, which also include the Los Angeles Knight Riders, the Seattle Orcas, the Texas Super Kings, the Washington (D.C.) Freedom, and MI New York.

They call themselves the Unicorns as a direct nod to a rare Silicon Valley startup. 

But White wants fans to watch cricket in the Bay Area to root for the team's top players, which include: Pat Cummins, Matt Short, Haris Rauf, Hassan Khan, Sanjay Krishnamurthi, Josh Inglis, Finn Allen, Corey Anderson and Jake Fraser-Mcgurk. 

Saurabh Netravalkar, who works at Oracle and helped Team USA win the ICC Men's T20 World Cup against Pakistan, is not a Unicorn. He plays for Washington Freedom. 

Major League Cricket aficionados have long eyed the Coliseum for a facility that can accommodate the game, which requires a different field setup than baseball. 

"But obviously, we've never really been able to utilize it until this point in time," White said.

This point in time refers to the A's vacating the Coliseum at the end of September to play in Sacramento and then their ultimate destination of Las Vegas, where a new stadium is being built for them there. 

The Oakland Roots soccer team has also signed up to play their 2025 season at the Coliseum and will share the space for the two-game cricket tournament. 

White presented the cricket proposal to the Alameda County Coliseum Authority last week in an informal manner, without providing renderings or a detailed proposal just yet. 

The Cricket World Cup committee had thought about possibly playing games at the Coliseum but the International Cricket Council couldn't figure out how to make that happen and moved the games to New York. 

Because the fields are different for cricket than they are for soccer, baseball and football, White said that he and his colleagues are considering moving the cricket field and equipment used in the New York World Cup to Oakland by truck.

"So we will bring those pitches down, and then we use a crane to cut them into the middle of the facility, and drop in wickets," White said, referring to the wooden stumps used for the game. 

What helps, White said, is that the Oakland Roots are redoing the diamond of the baseball field to work for their soccer games, "which is advantageous to us," White said. 

Then, that area will be "grassed" and the edges will need to be curved to create an oval shape.  

White said that officials are looking into just how much money this would entail. 

" I guess that I guess the ultimate deciding factor for us will be the cost of that," White said. "Then, we're off to the races, as they say."