POMONA, Calif. (AP) — The Los Angeles Knight Riders played their first home game Wednesday under the lights of their brand-new cricket field in Southern California, marking a milestone event as excitement builds for the 2028 Olympics.
Cricket, the second most-watched sport in the world, is set to be included in the Olympic Games after a 126-year hiatus. With a global following of over 2.5 billion, the Olympics are expected to draw international attention to Knight Riders Cricket Ground in Pomona, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of downtown Los Angeles. Major League Cricket, which currently holds a monthlong season with six teams, is hoping to build momentum by giving sports fans in major markets a taste of the excitement cricket can produce.
About 2,000 spectators — predominantly South Asian — filled the stands Wednesday night for the first match between the home team and the Washington Freedom. They cheered as the first ball of the match was bowled and the thwack of the strike echoed across the stadium — a $21 million, 200,000-square-foot (18,580-square-meter) facility with six floodlit towers that went from groundbreaking to completion in under 70 days.
As the crowd waved purple and gold flags — the Knight Riders' colors, just like the Los Angeles Lakers — a DJ mixed in Bollywood and Bhangra music with Bad Bunny and evergreen pop hits like Neil Diamond's “Sweet Caroline” and Queen's “We Will Rock You.” Lakers legend Metta Sandiford-Artest, formerly known as Ron Artest, bowled the ceremonial first ball to inaugurate the new stadium.
Venky Mysore, CEO of Mumbai-based Knight Riders Sports, said the cricket conglomerate took no shortcuts in building the stadium with eight pitches. A pitch, also called a wicket, is a rectangular strip where most of the action takes place during a cricket match. Most stadiums only have four to six pitches, Mysore said.
The San Gabriel mountains provide a dramatic backdrop to the stadium, located in the Fairplex event complex. It has temporary seating to accommodate about 5,000 for the 2026 season. That will be replaced by permanent seating for over 20,000 in the next year or so, Mysore said.
Also in the works is a professional-level practice facility and a Knight Riders Cricket Academy, which he said will help promote and build interest for the game at a grassroots level.
Right now, only three other international-level cricket stadiums operate in the U.S. — in Texas, Florida and North Carolina. The sport is also played in other multipurpose venues such as the Oakland Coliseum.
Tanush Bhagwat, a 13-year-old fast bowler, traveled from San Diego with his family to watch Wednesday’s game. He plays for two local leagues and hopes to make the major league and play for Team USA someday.
“The ground looks great,” he said. “But the Olympics is going to be even more fun. I can’t wait.”
Raj Walia, an Orange County resident, said the last time he watched live cricket in Los Angeles was an exhibition match between India and Pakistan in 1989. He showed up with about 30 friends and family members to catch the first game played in the new stadium.
“I’m excited about Major League Cricket,” he said. “I think cricket is increasing in popularity and it’ll become even bigger with the Olympics.”
Saurabh Netravalkar, a fast bowler with the winning Washington Freedom team, earned Player of the Match on Wednesday for taking three wickets while conceding only 16 runs. Also a member of the national team, Netravalkar said he enjoyed playing at the new stadium.
“It’s heartening to see the vibe, the crowd,” he said. “It’s so great for the sport in this country.”
Netravalkar, 34, said he never thought he would get to see cricket make it to the Olympics during his career.
“But, it’s really happening, and that’s exciting,” he said. “Cricket in the U.S. has evolved exponentially over the last five years. We’re on the right track.”
Karthik Gattepalli, a 26-year-old left-arm spinner for the Los Angeles Knight Riders, said he relished playing with his teammates before an excited home crowd.
“Having the local fans, the vibe, the view of the mountains,” he said. “This is something you can’t beat.”
Gattepalli, who played for the Under-19 U.S. team, sees Major League Cricket as an opportunity for “homegrown kids” like him to thrive in large venues and “make it to the Olympics.”
League CEO Johnny Grave said he and others leading the growth of cricket in the U.S. are now focused on the Olympics.
“The legacy of 2028 is what we’re most interested in,” he said. “Today is just the start of this level of professional cricket coming to Los Angeles and Southern California. This is a permanent base for cricket.”
Young cricket fans watch the LA Knight Riders' first home game at the team's new stadium in Pomona, Calif., Wednesday, July 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Deepa Bharath)
Louisiana’s attorney general was indicted Thursday over accusations she threatened the jobs of New Orleans leaders who fought a Republican-led overhaul of local courts in the heavily Democratic city.
The 16-count indictment against Republican Liz Murrill, handed up by a New Orleans grand jury, charges Louisiana’s first female attorney general with intimidation and malfeasance. At the center of the case are deepening rifts between state leaders in Louisiana, which is heavily Republican, and Democrats who control the state’s most prominent city.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry promised a swift pardon, saying Murrill would not have her reputation tarnished by an “Orleans Kangaroo court.” Mayor Helena Moreno, a Democrat, was among those who had accused the state’s top law enforcement official in May of making threats against public officials.
The assistant district attorney handling the case, Laurie White, is a retired Orleans Parish criminal court judge appointed as a special prosecutor, and she said she expects the case to be “very simple” and “very open and shut.”
In response to Landry’s promise to pardon Murrill, she said, “Let’s get her convicted, and then he can pardon her.”
Landry, Murrill and GOP legislators have been sparring publicly for months with New Orleans officials over the local elected office won last year by a man who spent nearly three decades in prison for a wrongful conviction.
At Landry's urging, legislators enacted a law to eliminate that job, Orleans Parish criminal court clerk, and give its duties to the civil court clerk. That kept the elected criminal court clerk, Calvin Duncan, from taking office in May. Murrill and Landry have long refused to acknowledge his innocence, though he's listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.
Bond for Murrill was set at $400,000 on Thursday, according to court records. Landry slammed the indictment in a social media post on Thursday, promising to pardon Murrill “as fast as the law allows.”
“The criminal justice system is a circus at its finest in Orleans and we will not have any of that!” he wrote on X.
The Republican Attorneys General Association said that making statements to local officials — in writing — was simply “issuing a legal opinion and warning public officials about the law” as part of her official duties. It called the indictment “as outrageous as it is dangerous.”
Local officials had a swearing-in ceremony for Duncan on the steps of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court two weeks before he was to take office — while lawmakers still were considering the measure to eliminate his job, combining its duties with those of the civil court clerk.
Then, in May, the City Council sought to oust the civil court clerk and set a special election for November to fill the combined job — and give Duncan a chance to claim it. That prompted Murrill to warn local officials that they could lose their offices for violating state “usurper” laws, which forbid support for an unauthorized officeholder.
“Louisiana’s usurper laws carry serious consequences, and I will enforce them,” Murrill wrote in a May statement when her office publicized the letters.
Murrill called the case against her “retaliatory, meritless, and unconstitutional,” in a Thursday evening post on X.
“I will not back down. I will continue enforcing the law, fighting corruption, and doing the job the people of Louisiana elected me to do” she wrote, saying that she would file an emergency appeal with the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Moreno, who was among the officials that Murrill said could be ousted, said indictment is “a matter for the courts” and did not directly address the allegations against Murrill.
“My focus, as always, remains on fulfilling the responsibilities the people of New Orleans elected me to carry out,” Moreno said.
Moreno and the five city council members who received the letters swiftly rebuked the attorney general’s guidance in videos posted on social media.
“It is surprising that the attorney general put all of this in a letter considering that there is a criminal law” that prohibits intimidation, Moreno said in an Instagram video at the time.
White told reporters after the indictment: “We’re very interested in elected officials in New Orleans not being intimidated or threatened by letter or any other way.”
Those who backed the law eliminating Duncan’s elected position argue that it promotes government efficiency and tries to improve a dysfunctional court system in Orleans Parish. They also said the offices of criminal and civil clerks of courts are combined in other parishes.
Duncan has said he believes state officials were retaliating against him in eliminating the job he won with 68% of the vote.
Duncan was a jailhouse lawyer who later graduated from law school. He founded a nonprofit dedicated to expanding incarcerated people’s access to the court system and was the driving force behind a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended nonunanimous jury convictions.
He sought compensation from the state over his imprisonment but withdrew his petition after Murrill threatened to go after his law license because he referred to himself as exonerated. She also demanded during his campaign that he stop describing himself that way or face “further action.”
Duncan spent more than 28 years in prison over a fatal shooting during a robbery in 1981.
The night before a 2011 hearing to consider new evidence, prosecutors offered to reduce Duncan’s sentence to the time he’d already served in prison if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and armed robbery. Duncan took the deal and was freed but didn’t give up on clearing his name.
In 2021, a judge agreed that Duncan had been unjustly convicted and vacated his sentence altogether. Landry and Murrill have pointed to the 2011 plea deal in objecting to Duncan calling himself exonerated.
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Associated Press reporter Jack Brook contributed from New Orleans.
FILE - Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill speaks with attendees during an election night watch party for U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La., May 16, 2026, in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton, File)
