In the land of soccer, a cricket oasis is emerging outside of Houston

The game of cricket has taken hold in Texas’ largest city as the culture of competitive sports meets a growing South Asian population.

WHY WAS HERE

We explore how America defines itself, one place at a time. The cricket complex outside Houston hosts both youth and professional players, reflecting the growing popularity of the sport in a changing city.

July 15, 2023

Drive northwest out of Houston, and as the cow pastures fight their way back into flat space from the city’s tentacled sprawl, suddenly, improbably, many, many cricket fields spring up along the road.

Head south to find a small cricket stadium in the suburbs, or west to find fields sprouting in county parks.

Born in Great Britain, the game of cricket, a bat-and-hit competition of patience and athleticism barely understood by most Americans, has suddenly taken hold in the land of Friday Night Football. The growing population of South Asian immigrants around Houston and Dallas brought their favorite sport to their adopted home, where it has grown amid the Lone Star’s competitive culture in everything, especially sports.

Cricket’s rapid rise in Houston has drawn international attention and helped make Texas the home of the sport’s first professional league, Major League Cricket, which began its inaugural season Thursday outside Dallas.

One of the unknowns about Houston is the diverse population of many cricketing countries, said Tim Cork, deputy consul general at the British Consulate in Houston. There are Indians, Pakistanis, there’s obviously a huge amount of British here, Australian accents everywhere you go.

The number of people of Native American heritage in Texas has doubled in the past decade to half a million, according to estimates from the Census Bureau’s annual survey, including 73,000 in Harris County, which includes Houston, and 64,000 in suburban Fort Bend County.

When I came to this country, the only sport I knew was cricket, said KP George, a Fort Bend district judge who immigrated to the United States from India in 1993. When he was elected in 2018, none of the county parks had a cricket field, he said. Now there are seven of them, and each one is booked to play months in advance.

He said the demand is huge. We worked in a couple of other areas.

The pace of development of the sport in Houston has surprised even those who have worked for it.

In March, Houston played the draft for the new professional league at the Johnson Space Center, one of the city’s biggest tourist attractions. In fields northwest of Houston, newly minted leagues met this month for training camps.

We always thought we would build it slowly, said Mangesh Chaudhari, 38, owner of Prairie View Cricket Complex, who as of 2018 oversaw the task of leveling farmland about 50 miles northwest of the city into six cricket ovals. fields. Suddenly the cricket picked up.

The location along a major highway in Prairie View, Texas, provided both the right kind of clay for a turf field on which cricketers bowl and bat, and free advertising to passing cars on US Route 290.

The project, designed and funded by Houston businessman Tanweer Ahmed, was a Field-of-Dreams gamble that people would come to if they built it. It worked better and faster than they had expected, Mr. Chaudhari said, adding that the complex was still a work in progress. For example, there are no lights or permanent toilets yet.

On a weekday in June, dozens of cars streamed into the cricket complex. Young players arrived from Atlanta and Dallas for the youth tournament, carrying large bags of clubs and pads in the gathering heat.

Good luck guys! Congratulations! Play hard! Golam Nowsher, 61, shouted to his teenage players from the Houston area as they took the field.

Mr. Nowsher moved from Bangladesh, where he had been a star player, and has been coaching young cricketers in Houston. He watched as his team was beaten early in the five-hour or so match and joked about cricket and career with the players huddled in bleachers under a small shaded area.

Which guys are going to study artificial intelligence? he asked.

I study computer science, one player said.

I thought you were going to be a doctor? Mr. Nowsher replied.

As the team’s 17-year-old captain Arya Kannantha waited for his turn to bat, he said he was thinking about college and also trying to make the U.S. national team. Despite the proliferation of cricket around Houston, few of her classmates in Katy’s suburbs live together the biggest and most expensive high school football stadiums in the country they knew cricket.

Not many people at my school play it, Arya said. He added with a laugh: They just think it’s baseball, but weird.

Far from a curiosity, cricket is a passion in Texas’ burgeoning South Asian community and is becoming big business, attracting major local investors such as Ross Perot Jr., a businessman and son of an ex. independent presidential candidate. Mr. Perot, along with his business partner Anurag Jain, owns the local major league team, the Texas Super Kings.

Perot recently said he would discuss cricket with Gov. Greg Abbott during a visit by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. I said, Mr. Prime Minister, I want you to know that we are bringing cricket to this state, Mr. Perot said. She was shocked and loved it.

Mr. Jain, who grew up playing cricket in Chennai, India, and now lives in Dallas, encouraged investment in the fledgling US professional league, citing the sport’s huge international following and large fan base in Texas. They tell you that food is the way to a man’s heart, Mr. Jain said. Cricket is the way to a South Asian’s heart. It’s more than a sport, it’s a way of life.

Cricket’s arrival has given hope to some leaders in Prairie View, home to historically black state university Prairie View A&M, that the tournaments will become a source of revenue for the cash-strapped city, despite having few cricket fans or the South. Residents of Asia.

Our attitude is to help them, to help them grow, said Kendric Jones, county commissioner and college graduate. It is a tourist attraction.

One evening in March, hundreds of people gathered at the Johnson Space Center for the Major League Cricket draft.

Inside, beneath suspended satellites and astronaut suits, cricket fans and investors in the leagues six inaugural teams based in New York, Seattle, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Texas mingled with young prospects.

Harmeet Singh, who grew up playing in Mumbai and was selected first overall in the draft, recently moved from Seattle to a large house in the Houston suburb of Katy.

Weather wise, I can play more here, Singh, 30, said as he stood with his wife and 2-year-old daughter. It was an upgrade when we were in Seattle in an apartment for the same price.

At the back of the museum hall, next to a large space capsule and a table of small hamburgers, stood many of the people who helped develop the sport in Houston, including Yogesh Patel, 75, who founded the cricket club when he arrived in the city. almost five decades ago.

It feels like what I dreamed of in 1976 has come true, he said looking around. Houston has become the cricket capital of the USA