Move over, baseball: 14 photos of Phoenix's new official cricket pitch

That’s a sticky wicket! In Phoenix, you no longer need Google to figure out what that means. You simply can find out in person.

On Friday, the city unveiled three fields – er, pitches – dedicated solely to cricket. It’s the other bat-and-ball sport, most popular in Britain and South Asia but with a growing following in the U.S. – including in the Valley. Cricket might not overtake baseball in the hearts and minds of Arizonans – this is the home of spring training, after all – but it’s carving a place in the Phoenix sports landscape. Literally.

For the past 20 years, local cricket organizations have been reserving Phoenix’s all-purpose fields to play matches, the city said in a press release. No longer. Now, there are three pitches where “players of all ages and skill levels will finally have access to play the game in a proper environment.”

The three pitches are at Turtle Rock Basin and Grover’s Basin parks, both located off Bell Road in north Phoenix. The city celebrated their opening Friday with a ribbon-cutting by Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego – who also took a swing with a cricket bat – and a demonstration by the North Phoenix Cricket Club at the Turtle Rock Basin pitch.