There has been an ex­plo­sion of crick­et in At­lanta with the com­mis­sion­ing of six crick­et fields at the Param Veers Crick­et Fields in Ry­dal, Geor­gia in the Unit­ed States.

Just on the out­skirts of the quaint town of Cartersville, six beau­ti­ful­ly man­i­cured crick­et fields of in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard can be found. This is the re­al­i­sa­tion of a dream by busi­ness­man Jayesh Pa­tel.

The re­al es­tate mag­nate has pumped some US$10 mil­lion in­to the project thus far and plans to in­vest more to bring in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et to the area. There has been a lot of in­volve­ment al­so by West In­di­ans in sup­port of this ven­ture.

The ‘Uni­verse Boss’ Ja­maican Chris Gayle was one such West In­di­an who made the trip across to At­lanta to of­fi­cial­ly turn the sod to start con­struc­tion. The project, which is now two years on, has six com­plet­ed fields and the dri­ve­way lead­ing to the grounds is called the ‘Cham­pi­on Way’ which was of­fi­cial­ly opened by T&T's Dwayne Bra­vo.

Pa­tel a busi­ness­man, crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tor and lover of the game of crick­et de­cid­ed some time back that there was no fu­ture in crick­et be­ing played on As­tro­turf which has been the norm in the Unit­ed States for years. He em­barked on a jour­ney to have a crick­et com­plex with on­ly turf pitch­es and this has been achieved. The main field, which is up to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard has sev­en strips and was con­struct­ed by the ex­pe­ri­enced Ja­maican grounds­man Sam Plumber. In to­tal spread over the six fields, there are 21 strips for crick­et to be played on.

Pa­tel, his wife Sima and son Param have worked tire­less­ly to see this project come to fruition. Re­cent­ly, mi­nor league crick­et was played at the venue and for the first time crick­et was played on the main pitch, 188 runs were scored. Tes­ta­ment to a good pitch with the ball com­ing on­to the bat.

Pa­tel is proud of his achieve­ment, say­ing: "This has been a labour of love for me and my fam­i­ly. Every cent of this $10 mil­lion has been put in by me. This has been done pure­ly on pas­sion but now ad­vis­ers Suren Gang­dar­avam and Pro­mod Pawar have ad­vised me that due to the heavy main­te­nance costs in­volved with such a venue, we have to make it to some ex­tent a busi­ness ven­ture.

“I have helped crick­et a lot in the Unit­ed States and es­pe­cial­ly At­lanta and will con­tin­ue to do so now with the com­ple­tion of my ground.”