In T20 World Cup warmup at Eisenhower Park, a connection for cricket fans

They came with kazoos. They buzzed the kazoos and shook flags and little stuffed tigers and when somebody made a play on the pitch they roared their gratitude, then drank judiciously from $12 Coors.

This was the soft open Saturday of the Men’s T20 World Cup at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in East Meadow’s Eisenhower Park, which drew about 8,000 fans for a warmup match between India and Bangladesh.

“It’s a blessing,” said Sahil Sethi, 30, a software developer from Manhattan who grew up playing the game in New Delhi but had seen no live international cricket since he moved to the United States six years ago. “This is one thing I used to miss, and I lost a bit of touch. I feel the connection, to sport, to country. … It’s a portal.”

If this wasn’t the full T20 experience — there was no sign of the flame-throwing pyrotechnic devices tournament officials said would ignite when someone bashes a six, very roughly analogous to baseball’s grand slam, and the turnout was a fraction of the 34,000 expected for some matches when group stage play starts Monday — there was plenty of T20 spectacle.

Harry Singh, the gas station magnate and chairman of Nassau’s tournament host committee, showed up with an entourage and chatted before heading off to a luxury box. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman also appeared. Giant video screens tracked the action, and a DJ blasted house music. Midway through the match, someone ran onto the vast circular pitch, approaching the center before authorities tackled him and five burly Nassau cops hustled him off, drawing cheers.

“The place looks amazing,” Singh said. The stadium will draw foreign dignitaries, wealthy fans and “Bollywood-Hollywood stars,” he said. “Hundreds of thousands of people are going to go to local restaurants, hotels, contractors …” Singh’s list of businesses that will benefit was long and extended to those that haul the garbage and rent the tents. The tournament, he said, will be one of the largest events in the county “for a long time to come.”

Nassau will host eight more matches from Monday through June 12. 

Two elite sides play

India won this match 182-122, sprinting to a lead off power hitting by Rishabh Pant and Hardik Pandya, then stifling Bangladesh’s offense. T20 is a compressed format of cricket, played over about three hours, not five days, which encourages risk-taking by batsmen and sometimes necessitates shocking athleticism by fielders sprinting at the boundary to make a catch. Nevertheless, the pace was sedate, with time for fielders to confer and polish the ball after catching out a batter, and a drinks interval that stopped play entirely for several minutes.

In the stands, Keith Lewin, 65, a fire alarm technician from Uniondale, one of the few fans without ties to South Asia — he learned his cricket on the island nation of Jamaica — said he’d paid $190 for his ticket. “I think they could have lowered the price and filled the stadium,” he said.

Remaining tickets for the stadium’s marquee India-Pakistan match June 9 are now selling for $2,500 to $10,000 on the International Cricket Council website, more than Lewin was willing to pay. If West Indies were playing in Nassau — they are not — it would have been a different story, he said. “I would have paid any money to see this,” he said. Still, he was happy to watch two elite sides play live. “I haven’t seen a cricket match in at least 40 years,” he said.

Local officials spent more than six months planning for the tournament, and Blakeman said Saturday that the logistics had paid off. A bus shuttle system picking up fans from the Westbury Long Island Rail Road station and from Nassau Coliseum appeared to work flawlessly Saturday, with little or no wait time. Police presence was heavy, with officers on horseback and on foot patrolling the grounds, some carrying long guns. Security guards at the ticket gates appeared to be strictly enforcing rules forbidding some bags and objects, directing some fans to place belongings in lockers outside the grounds.

“This is going to be the most secure place in Nassau County,” Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder told reporters Saturday near the Eisenhower Park grounds. “Everything that moves out in this park, we know about it.”

Outside the stadium, Sidra Naru of Bay Shore and Tanzina Haque and Hedeyetur Turzo, both 24 of Deer Park, sampled the concessions. Collectively, they’d paid about $40 for drinks, cotton candy, a sandwich and an order of samosas.

‘It’s next level’

Naru, a web designer, supports Pakistan and said that before this summer, she had grown resigned to waking up early on weekends to watch matches. Having the World Cup so close felt like an amazing stroke of fortune, she said.

“I don’t think any of us thought, ‘Oh, we’re going to be in Nassau and there’s going to be an ICC World Cup and we’re going to go,’” she said.

Turzo, a gardener who supports Bangladesh, chimed in: “This is one of the nicer things life’s brought us. You don’t get this close, most people, in their lifetime.”

Across the concession pavilion, Prince Shah, 33, a construction manager from Lindenhurst, was buying $30 caps with his mother, Dharmistha Shah, a teacher from Bellerose, Queens.

Prince Shah took a professional interest in the speed of construction of the temporary stadium, which was completed over a matter of months this spring.

“It’s my first time in my whole life watching a live cricket match. … It’s next level,” he said. His mother reminded him that he’d played the sport himself as a kid in India.

Asked if he might take up the bat again — cricket officials have said they are holding part of the Cup in the United States this year to kindle interest in the game — Shah said yes, “100 percent. I’m going to get back to it. It reignited the fire, and I’m excited.”