RICHARDSON — As the floodlights shined down on UT Dallas’ newly renovated cricket field Tuesday night, cheerleaders ducked out of the way to avoid a ‘six’ sailing over the field boundary in their direction. Bollywood hits blared alongside Avicii and 50 Cent.
It wasn’t all that different from a baseball game, minus occasional interruptions from the public address announcer to explain the rules of a sport that has yet to become mainstream in the U.S., despite the efforts of avid cricket promoters who brought the newly formed National Cricket League’s first tournament to North Texas.
The six-team NCL, based in Dallas, has chosen the region as the epicenter of its mission to grow the professional game in the United States. It’s the latest in a recent surge of live cricket events in North Texas, where organizers hope to capitalize on the area’s love of sports and strong support from the South Asian community.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area led the country in Asian-American population growth from 2022-2023, according to a recent report from Austin-based nonprofit Asian Texans for Justice, with Indians making up the largest subgroup. Collin County accounted for 45% of the area’s Asian-American population growth.
The region has also hosted Major League Cricket games and the T20 World Cup in Grand Prairie, where a former minor league baseball stadium was repurposed for cricket.
But the NCL’s Sixty Strikes tournament, which began Oct. 4 and runs through Monday, hasn’t attracted the thousands of spectators each day the league predicted, despite featuring some of the biggest names in cricket. On Tuesday night, the grandstands of the stadium, which can hold more than 3,500 people, were sparsely populated, with perhaps a few hundred spectators.
Cricket is the world’s second most popular sport behind soccer, but it’s relatively unknown in most parts of the U.S. Much like baseball, each team has batsmen, fielders and bowlers (similar to pitchers). The object is to hit as many bowled balls over the field boundary, which is worth six runs, or four if the ball bounces before going over.
The “innings” in cricket are called “overs,” and six balls are bowled to each team in an over. There are 10 total overs in the NCL’s 60 strikes format, significantly less than traditional cricket, which can have more than 450.
“We wanted to keep the purity of the cricket, but we still wanted to do a format which is acceptable to the American sports lover,” said Arun Agarwal, the CEO of a Dallas-based textile company and chairman of the NCL. “That’s what 60 strikes is doing. The original format is long. This is short. It combines sport and entertainment all together.”
All matches are played at UTD’s cricket stadium, which came to fruition only after the league’s plans to build a stadium in the Cadillac Heights area of Southern Dallas fell through.
Agarwal, who is also president of the Dallas Park and Recreation Board, told an audience at a November news conference that equity was a factor in the tournament’s site selection, stating the event would promote economic development in the area. But delays in obtaining the proper building permits from the city forced a postponement of the tournament originally scheduled for May, and eventually, the NCL decided to look for another venue.
UTD emerged as an option because it had a cricket field, for one, and because the league believed its students would embrace this first of its kind event.
More than 20% of the Richardson university’s roughly 30,000 undergraduates are international, with 3,200 of them from India, UTD vice president for alumni relations and development Kyle Edgington said. The school has a cricket club that competes against other area colleges, and one of its former students, Ali Sheikh, plays in Major League Cricket for the Seattle Orcas.
“When Arun Agarwal called me in June and asked if we had a cricket pitch, I said, ‘Yes, we absolutely do,’” Edgington said. “We thought it would be a great opportunity for us to further brand UT Dallas here. We’re the first university in the world to host a professional cricket tournament, and we feel like that just fits with what UT Dallas is, in terms of being innovative and novel, and who we serve.”
For the NCL, which is starting from a grassroots level, playing in front of college students was also a draw. Despite the lower-than-expected ticket sales, the league is allowing UTD students to attend for free with their IDs.
“Anytime you decide on a project, you have to think of your captive base customer, and their presence here absolutely helped,” Agarwal said. “We know they know the game, they’ll embrace it and then bring it to other people. We want to promote cricket, but we also want to grow it, and that’s where being around young people helps tremendously.”
The NCL did give its operation a powerful jolt Monday by announcing that Sachin Tendulkar, known globally as the “God of Cricket,” will join the organization’s ownership group. He redefined cricket in the ‘90s with his incredible batting skills, and he is the all-time leading run-scorer in two different formats. His influence on the game’s popularity has been likened to that of Michael Jordan’s in his heyday with the Chicago Bulls.
Tendulkar will be on hand Monday night to present the tournament’s championship trophy, but even if his appearance doesn’t draw more fans, Edgington said he believes the NCL and UT Dallas are still a great match.
“We’re very eager, after the tournament, to sit around the table with them again and talk about what this partnership might look like in the future,” Edgington said. “The possibilities are there.”
Pragyan Ojha, a former Indian national team bowler who is playing for the Lonestars in this tournament, also said he believes cricket will catch on in North Texas and in the United States.
“I think the NCL is going to be that icebreaker, getting school kids, college kids, everybody to just experience the sport,” he said. “The most important thing is, we want this sport to grow with the locals, because that’s how the sport will be most visible.”
Cricket in North Texas: UT Dallas hosts National Cricket League tournament
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