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To most observers, the scene June 16 at Capital Park in Henrico's Northside probably looked typical of a Saturday morning: elementary and middle school-aged children gathered, wielding bats and whacking balls while coaches hollered tips and encouragement from the sidelines.
Parents slouched under the shade of a tree and chatted about plans for the rest of the weekend, their eyes squinting behind sunglasses to get a better glimpse on their kids out in the field.
Everyone appeared to be in good spirits, despite the unrelenting heat.
What made this morning atypical, however, was the particular sport the kids were playing. It wasn’t soccer, baseball, field hockey or even lacrosse. It was cricket.
A sizable crowd of children, parents and coaches were at the park that morning for a free sports clinic hosted by the Richmond Strikers sports club to kick off its youth summer cricket program. Attendees included about 30 children who had signed up for the clinic beforehand, as well as some newcomers.
Cricket, a sport that originated in England, has a massive following worldwide. Today, it is extremely popular in countries formerly part of the British Empire — the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Australia and a host of nations in the West Indies.
The sport is rapidly growing in popularity in the Richmond area due largely to a growing number of residents from South Asian countries, said Richmond Strikers executive director Jay Howell.
“Particularly in west Henrico County, there is a very large Indian and Pakistani population,” Howell said. “There are men playing cricket everywhere, all over the place.”
Vasu Rayapati, a member of the core “cricket council” that helped start the Strikers’ cricket program and one of its head coaches, is one such man. He is originally from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where he said he played cricket as a child just as Americans grow up playing baseball and soccer. After moving to Virginia seven years ago, Rayapati didn’t have to look far to sate his cricket fix. There were more than a few opportunities to get involved with the local cricket scene.
“By the time I arrived here, people were already playing,” Rayapati said. “So I played in some tournaments and all. We mostly play in the baseball fields that we reserve from the county.”
Cricket’s long history in Virginia
Though not as popular as some other sports, cricket is by no means a new game in Virginia. Colonists from the British Isles were familiar with it.
William Byrd II, the founder of Richmond, wrote in his diary about cricket games played by enslaved African Americans on his Westover plantation.
The oldest modern cricket club in the Richmond area is the Greater Richmond Cricket Club, which according to its website was founded in the late 1980s by Subhashish Sircar and Rajeev Khanna. Since then, other cricket organizations have sprung up, including Cricketing Richmond and the Central Virginia Cricket Association.
Decked out in fresh Richmond Strikers t-shirts and clutching water bottles, the coaches enthusiastically explained their passion for cricket and reiterated that the purpose of the clinic was to stir appreciation for the game in the area’s younger residents. Some members of the community have been trying to start a youth cricket program for three or four years, Rayapati said.
“In this clinic, we are teaching the kids the basics —fielding, bowling, how cricket is played,” Sunil Anathula, another coach at the clinic, said. “We just want to teach cricket to a new generation out here.”
“We are passionate about exposing the youth to the game,” Rayapati echoed.
Howell concurred with this sentiment.
“If the kids weren’t sure about being part of the game, this is an opportunity to learn the basics of it,” Howell said. “To learn about the rules and decide if this is something they’d like to participate in this summer. It’s just a way of connecting with the youth of the community.”
‘So excited to be part of this’
The Richmond Strikers cricket program has been in the works for a year. The Strikers recognized the benefit of a cricket program for youth and reached out to leaders in the existing cricket community for help.
“The Strikers contacted us because we are running the 30-team cricket league,” Rayapati said. “So they approached us to provide the coaching. Richmond Strikers is a leader in soccer, but they don’t have much expertise with coaching the cricket game.”
Originally, the plan was to begin the program in early April 2019 – when the cricket season begins. They ultimately decided, however, to get a headstart in the summer.
“It’s a pilot program, so we’re going to do about eight weeks this summer,” Howell said. “And then we’re going to build on that as we go into 2019.”
The cricket program has received substantial funding from Henrico County, Rayapati said. It paid $15,000 to build a cricket pitch — a fixture with a concrete base in the middle of the field crucial to playing the game — in Capital Park. Besides that, other equipment, such as bats, could be purchased from Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Parents at the clinic had different reasons for bringing their children.
Ravi Kumar Karri, originally from the city of Hyderabad in India, said he brought his 9-year-old son to the clinic because his son had long been intrigued by the notion of playing cricket competitively. He and his son closely followed all of the international matches and the 2018 season of the Indian Premier League, a widely broadcast cricket tournament that ran from early April to late May.
“He has some good knowledge about the game of cricket, and he’s so excited to be part of this,” Kumar Karri said.
Munish Arora, another immigrant from India, also came to the clinic for the benefit of his children. His two sons on the field were raving cricket fans who had heard of the new cricket program because they used to play soccer with the Strikers, he said.
“They love cricket,” Arora said. “They recently watched the IPL matches, so they really got motivated. If they could get a formal way to learn, that’d be great.”
Other families at the clinic were entirely new to cricket. Maisha and Stuart Hughes said they knew next to nothing about the game, but decided to bring their 12-year-old son, Christian, to the clinic to see if he fancied it.
“I actually got an email about this clinic because Christian’s enrolled in soccer,” Stuart Hughes said. “We decided to bring him out here to see what it was all about. If he says he likes it, then we’ll think about coming back.”
Coaches went over the rules of cricket and presided over practice games before the clinic ended around noon. Official practices for the summer program begin on Wednesday, June 20. If there are enough participants, the group will be split into an older and younger cohort, Howell said.
If everything goes smoothly, cricket has the potential to become a highly popular athletic event in Virginia and the rest of the United States, Howell said. Soccer shook off its status as an obscure, stereotypically European sport only in the past few decades.
“When soccer first started here in the ‘70s and ‘80s, not that many people were playing it,” Howell said. “I don’t forget, I’m from that era. Leagues were very, very small. People mainly played the big three: football, baseball, basketball. Soccer started in little pockets in little communities, and then it grew from there. I think this is something similar. I think it’s the beginning of something that will grow from the grassroots.”
