From backyards to World Cups: rise of cricket in Mason

Katie Samol | The Chronicle

The second most popular sport in the world has amassed a following of roughly 2.5 billion international fans. Popular in India, Pakistan, Australia and England, cricket is a bat-and-ball game with eleven players on each team, most similar in structure to baseball. There is a rectangular center pitch with a surrounding outfield. Teams take turns batting and fielding, aiming to score more runs than the other team in the span of the two long innings. Cricket is the most popular sport in India with deep rooted history — the earliest game recorded was played in 1721. The Mason City School District has a diverse student body, and some students have questioned why there is no high school league or club for such a culturally significant sport. Aarush Iyengar, a freshman at Mason High School (MHS), plays for Midwest Cricket Academy’s (MCA) team — the Cincinnati MCA Conquerors — in the Major League Cricket (MLC) Junior Championship League. Iyengar’s history with the sport is rooted in community connection; he began by playing cricket with his dad in their backyard, then started playing casually with friends as he grew older. “It’s kind of like neighborhood basketball; it’s neighborhood cricket,” Iyengar said. Iyengar said he enjoyed playing cricket with his friends and upon hearing that there was a cricket academy nearby that had a professional team, he sprung at the opportunity. Iyengar began attending practices at MCA and now plays with them full-time as a member of their MLC Junior Championship League team. In the summer of 2023, Iyengar traveled to England with the Cincinnati MCA Conquerors for the International Council for Cricket Academies (ICCA) Global Academy Championship. This experience exposed Iyengar to the culture surrounding cricket in a place where it is more popular. “For me, that was amazing,” Iyengar said. “Here in the United States, the atmosphere is completely different since not as many people know about cricket.” Cricket is the national sport of England, the second-most popular behind soccer. This strong fan base is drastically different from cricket’s smaller following in the United States. Iyengar remembers the energy and enthusiasm surrounding the game when he was in England, he said that the popularity of the sport also meant there were better facilities and staff to help throughout the tournament. “Everybody was talking about it,” Iyengar said. “There’s so much community for it, everyone just loves cricket over there.” Abhishek Bhave, a senior at MHS, was similarly introduced to cricket by his dad. Bhave’s father often watched cricket when Bhave was growing up, but he was not interested in the sport until he went to India in 2019 and saw the Cricket World Cup. “[The Cricket World Cup] is when I saw it live for the first time, then I started playing it with friends in India,” Bhave said. “There’s this thing called gully cricket, basically, you just play with your friends on the street.” The United States may have a ways to go to catch up with England and India concerning cricket visibility. Nonetheless, both Iyengar and Bhave said they believe that the cricket community has a definite space of their own in Mason. “I think now we’re growing a lot,” Iyengar said. “Maybe three or four years ago, I would say no, but now I would say a lot more kids [come] to practice. It’s a big and diverse group.” For Bhave, although he no longer plays for MCA, he still feels connected to cricket in the Mason community. Bhave said that recently, he has seen the sport become better represented in the Mason community outside of established clubs and teams. “After I left the MCA team in sophomore year, I still got calls from my friends who were like, ‘Yo, we’re just meeting up to play tennis ball cricket at VOA. Do you want to pull up?’” Bhave said. “I certainly think it’s still made a definite impact on my life, even though I’m not currently involved in a club setting.” Bhave said he thinks this casual play is an encouraging sign of cricket’s growth. Connecting with friends through cricket allows the sport to reach new audiences. “That just goes to show that cricket’s becoming increasingly popular in the US,” Bhave said. “It hasn’t had much significance in the past few decades, but now that there’s a greater Indian population [and] more people are being introduced to the sport, it’s definitely having a lot more impact.” As the popularity of the sport and the desire for the cricket community grow, Iyengar and Bhave said they see a space for an MHS cricket club or team. This could introduce cricket to those unfamiliar with it and continue to garner cricket’s popularity. “I’ve seen a few schools in Michigan and Indiana [that] introduced school cricket and made school cricket teams,” Iyengar said. “I think that would make a big difference because there’s so many people who know cricket and really enjoy cricket, but if there’s a team or a club, that would make it so much more popular.” Bhave says he believes the acknowledgment and inclusion of cricket as a sport from the school would help create a sense of cultural belonging for the Indian community. “I think having more recognition in terms of the school saying, ‘Oh, this is a school-sponsored sport’ would make a tremendous impact in how cricket is known because a lot of people don’t even know what it is,” Bhave said. Bhave said he believes a school-sponsored cricket team or club would introduce more people to the sport within the Mason community. “So many people don’t even know what it is when I say I play cricket — immediately, they think of the insect,” Bhave said. “Having more recognition [from Mason] of ‘Cricket’s a sport and Mason with a large Indian community can support that sport,’ I think would genuinely completely transform the way people look at cricket.” Bhave likened the impact of supporting cricket to that of supporting the football program. In the same way that football is important to many Mason students and Mason’s school spirit, the support of cricket, another culturally significant sport, promotes school connectedness and inclusion. “A lot of people, especially the Indian or Asian community, don’t have a strong cultural background with certain sports, like basketball, football [or] baseball, but there is a strong cultural heritage to cricket,” Bhave said. “[In the future] when people see, ‘Oh, Mason has a cricket team,’ that’s symbolic of Mason supporting the different cultures that are part of the school.” Bhave says he believes wider recognition of cricket should not be sought because of the merits of the sport itself, but because the act of recognition shows inclusion. “That’s why I would say having a school-sponsored cricket team is so important, not because of the sport itself, but because Mason has such a large Indian community, and having that sport is so crucial to helping people feel a sense of identity, and a sense of cultural belonging in Mason,” Bhave said.