In Dallas suburbs, Friday Night Lights make way for cricket
FRISCO, Texas — With the ornate spires of the Karya Siddhi Hanuman Temple anchoring the skyline behind them, a cricket batsman and bowler eyed each other across a brown grass field. Amid gusty winds, players waiting to bat watched intently from nearby bleachers.
No, this is not a scene in India, where cricket became a national obsession after arriving on the wings of British colonialism. Try North Texas, where Friday Night Lights have made way for weekend afternoons on the pitch.
Welcome to the new Lone Star State, where cricket matches, a Hindu temple and Indian grocery stores co-exist with Christian churches, cattle ranches and Jerry Jones’ Dallas Cowboys empire. More than a decade of expansion has given the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex the largest Asian growth rate of any major U.S. metro area, in the nation’s fastest growing state. According to U.S. Census Bureau figures, Indians account for more than half the region’s Asian population boom, with the Dallas suburb of Frisco alone experiencing growth to rival Seattle and Chicago.
While some Texans still bleed football, these days a growing number bleed cricket.
“In ’98, I came to the U.S. Then I stopped playing cricket because I didn’t have any availability here. Down the road four or five years later, I saw somebody playing cricket in Plano,” said Kalyan “K.J.” Jarajapu, a temple volunteer watching the Frisco-sponsored cricket league match. “I never imagined that there would be cricket for sure or there would be a cricket world like I saw back home in India here in (metro) Dallas.”
The share of Asians among the foreign-born in the U.S. has risen recently, from 30.1 percent
during the 2012-to-2016 period to 31.2 percent in the 2017-to-2021 period, as the share of immigrants from Latin America and Europe has fallen, according to the American Community Survey.
Immigrants from South Asia believe they’ve found the best of East meets West in Frisco and other Dallas suburbs. They’re living a new and improved American dream, with access to their preferred houses of worship, authentic food and a community radio station. But the dream also comes with painful realities about racism, pressure to balance two cultures and the mental health challenges of finding your way in an unfamiliar world.
Named in 1904 after the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway, Frisco, 30 miles north of downtown Dallas, started as a train stop and an agricultural hub. Today, it’s a global technology force. Companies including Toyota, FedEx and Goldman Sachs have drawn job seekers from afar, including a pipeline of IT workers from the tech hub of Hyderabad, India.
Combine good jobs with reputable schools, affordable housing and warm weather,
and the formula for growth is set.
Texas-based disciples of Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji came together in 2008 to purchase a 10-acre plot in Frisco and build a modest Hindu temple. Within three years, it was hosting hundreds of worshippers.
Jayesh Thakker, a temple trustee and joint treasurer for the India Association of North Texas, said they raised enough money to build a 33,000square-foot temple in 2015. Nearly 30 artisan workers came on special visas to ensure every detail honored Indian Hindu architecture.
“They built it first as an American structure and then they ‘Indianized’ it,” Thakker said.
New housing and schools soon followed. Laxmi Tummala, trustee and temple secretary, is also a realtor. Many of her clients settle for less just to live nearby.
“‘All that other stuff I wanted, it doesn’t matter if it’s going to put me 25 minutes or 30 minutes away. I want my kids to have this exposure,’” Tummala said.
Immigrants aren’t the only newcomers. Between 2015 and 2019, more than 17,000 people flocked to Frisco and surrounding Collin County from Dallas County and more than 8,000 from nearby Denton County, according to the Census Bureau.
Outside Texas, the biggest sources of new Collin County residents were Los Angeles and Orange counties in California, with 1,600 residents and 1,000 residents respectively.
But almost 6,000 new residents in the area came from Asia.
The Islamic Center of Frisco has benefited, too. Its board is planning to more than double the size of the 18,000-squarefoot mosque by 2024. With more than 3,500 people attending prayers and 460 children attending Sunday School, the board moved to acquire more space in 2019.
Azfar Saeed, the center’s president, remembers that nearly two decades ago only 15 people came to pray in a 400-square-foot shopping center suite on any given day.