WASHINGTON: North America is the land of football, a football that’s mostly played with hands, but now a group of South Asian Americans are trying to teach them the difference between silly-mid-on and silly-mid-off.

And South Asian cricket lovers hope this will be a yorker that gets the timber and will not be tossed out of the ground like similar efforts in the past did.

In Houston, Texas, they have built a cricket stadium, and many, many cricket fields (amidst) cow pastures,“ as The New York Times reported in a full-page article this week on how Desis are promoting cricket in the United States.

“A surging population of South Asian immigrants around Houston and Dallas imported their favorite sport to their adopted home,” NYT noted. And last Thursday, they launched the first America Major League Cricket in a suburban town in Texas. Some of the matches will also be played in North Carolina.

Teams are coming from all over the United States, and Canada and most teams have at least some Desi players.

Cricket in America is almost as old — or new — as the country is. According to the Smithsonian Institution, cricket was played throughout the 13 colonies in the early 18th century. George Washington was a strong supporter of cricket, while John Adams referred to cricket in one of his speeches.

But in the 20th century, it faded out ofed. the mainstream and was played only in urban pockets where Indians, Pakistanis, West Indians, and Bangladeshis lived.

USA Cricket, the official website of the US national cricket team, notes that the United States currently has more than 200,000 cricket players.

“These players participate in competitions in more than 400 local leagues, tournaments, academies, college and school programs,” the note adds. They play hardball, tape-ball, softball, disabled and indoor cricket.

There’s a shop in Annandale, Virginia, that has been selling bats, balls, wickets, and pads sine 2002. “Now, we have our own brand Zee-PK,” says shop owner Zafar Iqbal Chaudhary.

Junaid Bashir, a local cricket enthusiast, claimed that Mazhar Shah, a Pakistani American, was the pioneer of cricket in the Washington metropolitan area. Mazhar Shaikh, now dead, and his players, including Junaid Bashir, held regular matches at the Arlington Memorial ground.

“Our tournament was called the Azadi Cup,” Junaid Bashir said. “Every man of the match was given an Umrah ticket. Once, we took the entire team to Umrah.”

Some cricket lovers said that the West Indians, not South Asians, were the pioneers of modern cricket in America. And as cricket “entered the big-league stage, the Indians are taking overs,” said Zafar Iqbal. “They are investing millions, buying all major leagues and building stadiums.”

Mohammad Kamran Awan, a Pakistani entrepreneur, from New York, says he is brining “a star-studded lineup” of cricketers to major US leagues. The players he plans to bring include Shahid Afridi, Misbahul Haq, Kamran Akmal, Sohail Khan, Abdur Rehman, and Umaid Awan.

“We are bringing the excitement of Pakistani cricket to American shores,” he told local Pakistani journals. “It’s an arduous task for Awan but with Misbah ul Haq leading the way, we will succeed.”

A major league team, San Francisco, is believed to have hired Pakistani players, Harris Rauf, and Shadab.

Explaining why cricket was popular in Houston, Tim Cork, a deputy consul general at the British consulate, said: “One of the unknown things about Houston is the diversity of the population from many cricket-playing countries.”

“There are Indians, Pakistanis, there’s obviously a huge number of Brits here, Australian accents wherever you go,” she said.

The NYT pointed out the number of people of Indian heritage in Texas had doubled over the last decade to a half a million, including 73,000 in Harris County, which includes Houston.

The city also has tens of thousands of Pakistanis, mostly from Karachi and they have their own cricket teams.

Published in Dawn, July 24th, 2023