Injury-plagued former New Zealand all-rounder Corey Anderson is in line to represent the United States of America (USA) in international cricket.
According to a report in ESPN Cricinfo, the drawcard of holding ODI status is spurring an ambitious recruitment drive by USA Cricket that could lead to it including active internationals from around the world.
Anderson, who last played for the Black Caps in a T20 international against Pakistan in November 2018, is among the top players in USA Cricket’s list. The Christchurch-born Anderson has an American fiancée Mary Shamburger, and the couple spent quality time together during the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas.
Englan’s 2019 World Cup winner Liam Plunkett, whose wife is from Pennsylvania, has been mentioned as another target. Plunkett has played 13 Tests, 89 ODIs and 22 T20Is. His last game was an ODI against New Zealand in July 2019.
USA made their international debut at the 1979 ICC Trophy (now known as the World Cup qualifier) in England. It has since missed only two editions of the competition.
“We want to win cricket games. We want to qualify for World T20s, we want to qualify for World Cups. We want to win cricket matches. By winning cricket matches, we’re able to – we don’t do this very well at the moment, but we need to do this better – we build heroes and role models that are wearing the stars and stripes, and we need to amplify those stories. Sometimes those will be people who have come through the US and sometimes those will be people that come into the team because they have a passport or have qualified on residency grounds. But we want the USA team to be at the forefront of the international cricketing community’s minds,” USA Cricket CEO Iain Higgins was quoted as saying to ESPN Cricinfo.
Anderson is also in radar of becoming a marquee player for USA’s Major League Cricket – a franchise based T20 league – in Dallas, scheduled to begin in 2022. The left-hander has so far played 13 Tests, 49 ODIs and 31 T20Is for New Zealand, in which he has scored 683, 1109, and 485 runs alongside picking up 16, 60 and 14 wickets respectively.
