‘We can take any side down’: meet the USA’s T20 World Cup cricket squad

One of this summer's hosts is represented by a multinational, multicultural team that embodies the American dream

One summer night in Centerville, Ohio, in 2010, a scattered band of club cricketers gathered for their regular Wednesday practice session in Stubbs Park. One had brought a new recruit, his 19-year-old nephew Ali Khan, who had only just come over from his village in Attock, Pakistan. Khan had only ever played with a tape ball, but after his first over with a real one all the other players stopped to watch his second. Everyone," Khan remembers, was like: Wait, who's this kid? Where's he from again?'" They put him in the first team that very same weekend.

Over a decade later, Khan, now 33, has just finished the second of three games against Bangladesh at the Prairie View ground in Houston, a warm-up series for the World Cup. USA were one-nil up and one win away from their first-ever series victory against a Test-playing nation, but the game was getting away from them. Bangladesh only needed 21 runs from the last 18 balls. They had four wickets left, and one of them was Shakib Al Hasan, one of the world's very best all-round cricketers, who was 30 not out off just 22 balls.