LaGrange Cricket Stadium Is a $50 Million Private Bet

10,500 seats are planned for a cricket stadium in LaGrange, Georgia, a city of about 32,000 people. Siddharth Das, who runs DAS Cricket Academy in Edison, New Jersey, is privately financing the bowl on 45 acres off Interstate 85, with a target opening in Q1 2027.

Atlanta developer Selig Enterprises sold the 45-acre parcel next to Great Wolf Lodge. Das’s group, not Selig, is the party on the hook for the build. Organizers put the cost at more than $50 million and say no tax money and no tax breaks are in the deal.

A New Jersey Academy Buys 45 Acres off I-85

Das founded DAS Cricket Academy in 2008 and owns the Atlanta Blackcaps, a side in the United States Premier League, a rung below Major League Cricket. His group closed on the land in September 2025 after looking first at New Jersey and New York.

Cost and weather killed those sites, he said later. The Atlanta region had a milder calendar, cheaper dirt, and a highway interchange. The plot sits along Tom Hall Parkway, about 60 miles southwest of Atlanta, inside Selig’s 180-acre mixed-use campus called Sola.

Hundreds turned out on November 6, 2025, for the official groundbreaking in Troup County. As of November 14, 2025, the building contractor still had not been named. Atlanta studio TVS, whose past work includes interiors at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, drew the bowl.

Since we announced the stadium in LaGrange, obviously everybody’s like ‘Why cricket? Why LaGrange?’ But they just haven’t seen it. They haven’t seen how passionate we are about it and the excitement around the game.

Siddharth Das, founder, LaGrange Cricket Stadium

Organizers call the venue the first privately owned cricket stadium in the United States. That slogan skips a smaller precedent. Smart Choice Moosa Stadium in Pearland, Texas, was built with about $2 million of private money and has been running since 2015, with about 2,500 seats and later ODI accreditation.

Why They Passed on New Jersey and the North Metro

Atlanta already has cricket, just not in LaGrange. Amateur ovals and minor-league sides sit in Cumming, in the north metro, and Peachtree City has a recreational field on the way. Das still picked the Alabama-border mill town.

The site is right off the highway, next to a hotel, with more rooms coming, he said, and the city was willing. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is about an hour’s drive. West Point Lake is minutes away. He has called LaGrange “the perfect location for cricket’s next expansion.”

He is also selling T20 as a three-hour night, closer to football or baseball than the five-day Test that still scares first-timers. Baseball, he likes to remind people, came out of cricket. The pitch still has to hold for both a cricket oval and a FIFA-size soccer field, with full-time grounds staff swapping the surface between dates.

More Than $50 Million, and No Public Money

Asked whether taxpayers would pay any of the bill, Das said, “not at all.” Construction Equipment Guide, citing local reporting, later wrote that the stadium is being built with private investment and without tax abatements. The land price was not disclosed, and the sale had not yet shown up in Troup County deeds when the deal was first announced.

THE PRIVATE STACK

• The bowl: About 10,500 seats, expandable to 25,000, on 45 acres along Tom Hall Parkway.
• The check: Backers have put the build at more than $50 million, with naming rights still being shopped.
• The campus: Sola covers 180 acres and already holds Great Wolf Lodge, a family indoor water park.
• The rooms: Noble Investment Group is building a four-story, 124-room StudioRes by Marriott on Timberwolf Drive.

Selig still wants offices, apartments, single-family houses, and 150,000 square feet of retail on the rest of Sola. A sports-focused hotel is also planned on the stadium parcel. Greg Lewis, a Selig principal, has said entertainment is what now pulls mixed-use projects together. The cricket ground is the loudest new piece of that bet, and the one that has to draw people who do not already live in Troup County.

A 10,500-Seat Bowl Next to a City of 32,000

Ten thousand five hundred seats equal about one-third of LaGrange’s population. Das’s answer is the interstate. He said he would drive a few hours for a great event, and that fans will do the same for a top-class facility. The catchment he is counting on runs through Atlanta, then west toward Birmingham and Montgomery, plus the South Asian and Caribbean crowds that filled temporary stands at the 2024 T20 World Cup.

Small-town pushback showed up as soon as the renderings did. A lot of it was aimed at who would come, not at the construction budget. Soccer writers asked a colder question: whether a FIFA pitch in a city this size is really a USL or MLS Next Pro back door, given that Atlanta United already sits about as far away as LaGrange does from the south-metro soccer towns.

WHERE THE SEATS SIT

Grand Prairie, the Major League Cricket flagship, is a converted minor-league ballpark the city still owns. The 2023-24 rebuild ran about $21 million under a long-term lease. Nassau County’s 34,000-seat World Cup ground was a modular pop-up. LaGrange is trying to do something those sites did not: pour a permanent, private, 10,000-plus-seat cricket bowl in a town that has never hosted the game at this scale.

USA Cricket Filed for Chapter 11 the Same Week

Das has said he is working with the International Cricket Council and USA Cricket to land games and training camps. That pitch went out in the same stretch of weeks when the national governing body came apart.

The ICC suspended USA Cricket for governance breaches on September 23, 2025. Eight days later, on October 1, USA Cricket voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 in Colorado, calling it a structural reorganization. The filing came hours before a state-court fight with American Cricket Enterprises, the commercial group behind Major League Cricket.

THE CALENDAR BESIDE THE DIRT

1. September 23, 2025: The ICC suspends USA Cricket, the national governing body.
2. September 30, 2025: Selig announces the 45-acre sale to Das’s group.
3. October 1, 2025: USA Cricket files for Chapter 11 in Colorado bankruptcy court.
4. November 6, 2025: Groundbreaking is held on Tom Hall Parkway.
5. July 2, 2026: The court approves a settlement with American Cricket Enterprises.

USA Cricket, in its own release, said ACE had promised six ICC-grade stadiums by 2025 and delivered one. Das has been careful to call LaGrange an independent project that will work with any league, including USPL dates for his own Blackcaps. In October 2025 he said Atlanta was “the next obvious strategic location for leagues to grow.” MLC has not announced a Georgia franchise tied to the ground.

The next men’s T20 World Cup is not coming to Georgia. It is scheduled for Australia and New Zealand from October 21 to November 19, 2028. Olympic cricket at Los Angeles 2028 is booked for a temporary venue in Pomona, California. Any World Cup match in LaGrange would be a later cycle, if the ICC ever puts the United States on that map again.

Concerts, Soccer and a Monster Truck Plan

Das is not building a cricket-only weekend. The project site lists concert-grade rigging, shore power, truck-and-bus compounds, covered seating pods, and a concourse aimed at regional food. He has said he wants monster trucks in the bowl because the floor can take them, and that lighting and sound are being drawn for concerts and cultural nights, not just overs.

On soccer, he was blunt. Asked if a club effort would aim at USL or MLS Next Pro, he said, “Absolutely.” He also said the group is open to outside investors. The FIFA field would sit on the cricket oval, with time between dates for the turf crew. That is a hard double to maintain, and it is the part of the plan that makes the building useful in months when no touring cricket side is in Georgia.

Selig has pointed to an estimate of 30 million cricket fans in the country. Das likes a bigger number: more than 2.5 billion people, he says, enjoy the game worldwide. Neither figure fills a Tuesday in Troup County. The hotel rooms, the water park, and the interstate do more of that work on paper than a local season-ticket base can.

The Project Site Still Lists a Q1 2027 Opening

The official LaGrange Cricket Grounds site still advertises an ICC-compliant oval and a Q1 2027 target, “subject to approvals & programs.” It lists the construction window as 2025-2026 for site work, the bowl, mechanical systems, and fit-out. It is also still asking for investors, naming-rights partners, promoters, and vendors. Public construction updates have been thin since late 2025, when organizers said the 45 acres had been cleared and underground work had started, with international games the goal for Q1 2027.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The land: The 45-acre sale closed, and a groundbreaking was held on November 6, 2025.
• The money: Backers describe a private build of more than $50 million, with no public subsidy claimed.
• The date: Q1 2027 remains the published opening window, not a booked tournament slate.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The contractor: No builder had been announced as of November 14, 2025, and no later public naming turned up.
• The tenants: No MLC franchise, USL club, or ICC event is on the books for the ground.
• The World Cup: Future global tournaments are a stated hope, not an award from the ICC.

If the bowl opens on that Q1 2027 timetable, Das will have put a full-size cricket ground on I-85 in a city that did not ask for one in a bond vote. The remaining question is the one he has been answering since September 2025: whether enough people will drive to LaGrange to make the private bet pay.