India to play West Indies in USA

India will play two Twenty20 internationals against world champions West Indies in Florida later this month.

The T20 matches will mark the first full-member games in four years in the United States, a huge market for cricket bosses to crack.

The T20 format is likely to be the most appealing form of the game, in the face of traditional US sports, thanks to explosive batting and a relatively short matches.

The games will be held on August 27 and 28 at the Broward Stadium in Fort Lauderdale.

The Broward Stadium is the only ground in the United States that meets international cricket specifications, and organisers say they have invested about $US1.4 million ($A1.86 million) to bring it up to standard including tweaking the floodlights to point at the pitch and erecting giant video screens.

The venue last hosted a T20 international in 2012 when the West Indies and New Zealand played two T20 internationals there, both won by the West Indies in low-scoring affairs.

The Black Caps and Sri Lanka played the first full-member internationals at the venue in May 2010 when they split a T20 series 1-1. That series was forced to scrap a planned game under lights, but upgrades to the facilities since then have made matches under lights possible.

The Australian cricket team spent a week in New York before the recent one-day international tri-series in the Caribbean, where noted players enjoyed the anonymity of the Big Apple.

The Australians took in a baseball game before the series. Captain Steve Smith returned to the US after Australia had claimed the tri-series title and was invited to participate in batting practice with Boston Red Sox star Dustin Pedroia and later threw the ceremonial first pitch at Boston's storied Fenway Park venue.

"This will be a great opportunity for the cricket fans in America to watch the two champion sides in action. This will be developed into an annual cricketing event in the United States," BCCI president Anurag Thakur said on Tuesday.

"This will be a great initiative in our continued efforts to develop cricket in the Americas, a very important market," said Whycliffe Cameron, president of West Indies Cricket Board.

The latest move comes after Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar enjoyed success with their Cricket All-Stars matches featuring a host of retired greats in New York, Houston and Los Angeles.

That event was a massive hit, largely with the ex-pat populations of the major cities that flocked to see in person players such as Ricky Ponting, Kumar Sangakkara, Glenn McGrath, Wasim Akram and Matthew Hayden as well as the eponymous team captains.