Number of teams playing cricket in Houston area is expanding
ily nations that were once part of the British Empire, such as Pakistan, Australia andVyas’ native India.
The parents still mostly organize and coach the clubs, donating their time on the weekends and carting cricket gear for children that can be hard to find in the United States back from trips to visit family in India.
Thanks to their parents’ enthusiasm, many of the kids on the club teams grew up playing cricket with a plastic bat in the backyard and watching the Cricket World Cup on television, staying awake well past midnight last year to watch matches live in Australia.
Sudheer Kannantha, vice-president and cofounder of Katy Youth Cricket, got started early with his kids; his 2-yearold is already learning to play.
“The only two words he can speak are ‘bat’ and ‘ball,’ ” Kannantha said.
Like kids who participate in other sports, the Sugar Land club players say their favorite memories are of winning games or, as was the case for Aryan Patel, 13, an eighthgrade student at Quail Valley Middle School, continuing to play well in a game despite receiving an injury partway through.
The fact that cricket is unusual in the United States makes his experience extra special, said Anuj Shah, 10, a fifthgrade student at Madden Elementary School.
“It’s not something that everybody can do,” Shah said. Sport puzzled friends at elementary school
Last year, he brought cricket gear to school so he could play with friends during recess. His friends couldn’t figure out the rules.
Houston has had a thriving adult cricket league since the 1970s. It is popular enough that Kannantha played more of the sport in Houston than in his native India.
The adult cricket league’s 30 teams nowplay on fields in Houston, Stafford, Katy andPearland.
But most who play in the adult league are also from countries where cricket is already popular.
In India, cricket, like baseball in the United States, is jokingly referred to as a religion.
Like baseball, cricket features a batter who hits a ball to score runs.
But the similarities stop there, Vyas said.
Acricket field is shaped like an oval, with two bases in the center. The batter and another teammate runbetween them to score points.
During a game, players running between the bases resemble tennis or basketball players doing warm-up sprints across the court.
Batters and runners wear foam padsupto their hips to protect themselves from being hit by the ball.
The bat is held with two hands. Players can swing it like a baseball bat at waist level, or lower it like a golf club, depending on the height of the pitch.
Surya Saladi, who is on the board of directors for one of Houston’s adult cricket clubs, started the youth Triggers Colts Cricket League to keep the sport alive in Houston.
Without a youth program to teach kids the game, the adult league would eventually fizzle for lack of fresh talent, Saladi said.
Krishna Sikharam, the founder and coach of the youth club Energy Corridor Cricket, agreed.
“Unless you pass the game on to the next generation, there is no point in a few 40-year-old guys playing,” said Sikharam, who has two sons who play cricket.
The Triggers Colts league was the first and is still the only youth cricket league in the Houston area. It started in 2014, the same year that the Sugar Land and North West clubs began.
The Energy Corridor club was founded in early 2015.
Every year, the league hosts two main tournaments, one that begins in March and goes through July and another that lasts about two months in the fall.
It’s grown from five teams and 74 players in 2014 to 11 teams and 190 players.
It’s a year of firsts for the league.
During Memorial Day weekend, the Triggers Colts will host its first national tournament, with teams already committed to come from Chicago, Dallas and Missouri. Tape-covered tennis ball
For the first time, the young players in the clubs are using real cricket balls. When the clubs first started, they had players use tennis balls wrapped in electrical tape to avoid injuries.
Now, there will be teams for players ages 14 and under and for age 11 and under that play with the real cricket ball and a beginner team that will still use a tennis ball.
That’s why the Sugar Land club was practicing batting on this Sunday; so the kids could learn how to bat and aim with the newball.
They all wore the protective gear that typically only the batters wear so they could get accustomed to running and playing in it.
They also practiced catching. Except for the cricket equivalent of a baseball catcher, cricket players do not wear gloves.
Competing time commitments from other more established sports such as baseball or basketball is a challenge to keep kids in the league, never mind the hurdle of introducing the sport to kids from families not familiar with the game, Vyas said.
Finding facilities is another problem. Only about 10 cricket fields exist in the Greater Houston area, and the adult league has priority, Vyas said.
As a result, sometimes the youth teams end up playing matches in scorching heat in July, and practices can be planned for sites ranging from basketball courts to public school parking lots.
There has been some progress — the first field dedicated to youth cricket is planned for construction in Matzke Park in northwest Houston.
The league raised about $25,000 for its construction, Saladi said.
But despite the challenges and regardless of whether his sons keep playing, Vyas said he will keep coaching.
In addition to coaching the Sugar Land club, Vyas organized a spring break camp for this week, with Katy resident and professional U.S. cricket player and captain Sushil Nadkarni coaching the kids.
“I’ll continue coaching because I love the game,” Vyas said. “And I love getting kids to play the game.” margaret.kadifa@chron.com twitter.com/margaretkadifa