CRICKET’S POPULARITY GROWS, BUT SPACE IS DIFFICULT TO FIND
Youth league organizers say San Diego needs more dedicated fields
San Diego is experiencing a surge in people playing cricket, especially young people in Rancho Peñasquitos and nearby neighborhoods whose parents immigrated to the United States from India and other countries where the sport is wildly popular.
One youth cricket league based in Peñasquitos grew from 20 kids to 150 in just the last two years, forcing organizers to lobby city and school officials for more access to playing fields and permission to reconfigure them for cricket.
Organizers say the recent surge in youth cricket reflects San Diego’s increasing ethnic diversity.
Many cricket players are the children of engineers recruited from South Asian countries for hard-to-fill technology jobs, said youth cricket organizer Anita Wentworth.
“Diversity of population brings diversity of sports, restaurants and other activities,” said Wentworth, a Carmel Valley resident of Indian descent who immigrated to the U.S. from England.
“People like to celebrate their heritage when they are in a new place,” she said. “For the most part at this point, the people playing cricket here have an existing connection to the sport.”
But Wentworth and other organizers dream of a day when cricket, which is similar to baseball and softball, is popular with people born in the U.S. who didn’t grow up with the game.
They also look forward to a day when every high school has a cricket team competing against other schools.
Local adult cricket leagues have been incrementally growing since the 1990s and have a modest presence in Kearny Mesa, Linda Vista and University City.
But the recent surge has been among young people, many of them excited to celebrate their families’ heritage and emulate their fathers who grew up playing cricket in India, Australia, Pakistan, South Africa, Zimbabwe or England.
“It’s growing really rapidly,” said Shreyasi Mukund, a 14-yearold from Scripps Ranch who plays in the youth league. “There a lot of people playing because they come from a place where cricket is really popular.”
Cricket is rarely played in America, but worldwide it’s the second-most-popular sport — behind only soccer. It’s particularly popular in Commonwealth coun
tries, most of which are former British colonies.
But its presence on American TV has been steadily rising, allowing recent immigrants to stay connected to the sport.
And there’s another source of momentum for cricket in America: The U.S. and the West Indies have been chosen as hosts for the men’s T20 World Cup in 2024.
“It’s a pretty exciting time,” said Parth Thakker, president of the Peñasquitos youth cricket league.
A group of parents launched the league, the San Diego Cricket Club Youth Academy, in 2017 with about 20 kids.
Participation hovered around that number for a few years — until the pandemic, when membership exploded without any advertising as kids’ need for outdoor activities intensified.
“Word-of-mouth spread and started an exponential expansion,” Wentworth said.
Each team has both girls, who make up about 15 percent of the players, and boys.
The expansion also came with challenges — particularly the need for parkland suitable for cricket, a bat sport like baseball that’s played on an oval field larger than a typical soccer field.
Cricket also has a central area called a pitch, which is supposed to be made of concrete. But local organizers typically must make do with something less permanent than concrete, because fields must remain usable for other sports.
The youth league, which was granted nonprofit status in 2020, has steadily gained access to five city fields for short stints each week — Canyonside Park, Adobe Bluffs, Views West Neighborhood Park, Westview Park and Nobel Athletic Park.
But organizers continue to lobby San Diego officials to create the city’s first dedicated cricket facility.
Councilmember Marni von Wilpert, who represents the north inland neighborhoods that have become the local hotbed for youth cricket, has been lobbying city parks director Andy Field to work with local cricket groups.
Field declined several requests for interviews this month.
San Diego has been dealing the last two years with a similar lobbying campaign from a group of pickleball players who want the city to convert more tennis courts to pickleball and create a centralized facility in Point Loma.
It’s among many challenges faced by San Diego parks officials. Others include implementing a new master plan and shifting funding for new parks and park upgrades toward lowincome areas under new city infrastructure policies.
Cricket organizers say they’ve been frustrated with their slow pace of success getting access to enough fields.
“It’s been five years, and we still have zero dedicated fields,” said Meghan Sacheti, communications director for the youth league. “We are struggling to keep up with the popularity of the sport.”
Thakker said participation would have grown even more quickly if his group had access to more local fields.
“We had to put a freeze on our membership because of the infrastructure problems,” he said.
In addition to parks being booked for other sports and activities, the youth cricket league has faced resistance because an event usually brings more than 100 kids and parents and fills a neighborhood with cars and people, he said.
But Thakker and Sacheti said they are proud of the league’s rapid growth.
“We’ve been up against everything, but we’ve been kind of successful,” Sacheti said. “We have found our way through it.”
Some members travel south to San Carlos on Sundays to play cricket with refugees from Afghanistan, another country where cricket is popular.
Joel Matthews, a 17-yearold student at Westview High just west of Peñasquitos, said he enjoyed playing with them. He learned the sport from his father, who emigrated from India in 2000.
“I found soccer and cricket fun when I was younger, but I was better at cricket,” Matthews said. “Cricket came easier to me, and I got to practice a lot with my dad.”
Matthews hopes to make the under-19 national team.
Thakker said young people often get enthusiastic about cricket after a visit to the country their family came from, where they get a chance to see matches played in large stadiums and see how strongly the sport is embraced.
“They see that it’s a pretty big deal,” he said.