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Around 7 p.m. on a cool October evening, Babar Baig is standing at one end of Church Street Park staring into one of the three screens in front of him as he livestreams the final bout of a tournament between two top-ranked teams.
“There are thousands of people who watch this live on YouTube,” he said—12,000, to be exact, plus several hundred watching the contest in person.
The batter is in his position as a fast ball comes down the line. The batter swings and misses the swirling, dipping ball. He needs to hit the next one or his shot is over. He swings harder and connects this time, and the ball goes sailing outside the park.
It was World Series season, but it wasn’t baseball people were gathered to watch here in Morrisville. It was cricket, and Church Street Park has become a U.S. and global hub for the sport.
“When I first started making cricket videos in the area and uploading them on YouTube a couple of decades ago, there were no grounds in Morrisville and we used to play on the streets and parking lots, similar to gully cricket in Pakistan,” said Baig, who was born in the United Arab Emirates to Pakistani parents and moved to North Carolina in 2000.
Baig, 42, is the production manager for the Triangle Cricket League (TCL) and previously served as the league president. The league has been around since 2009, and moved to Church Street Park in 2013 after locals of Indian subcontinent heritage—who now constitute almost half of the suburb’s 30,000 residents—pushed for its creation.
The game is played on a pitch, with two teams of 11 players who take turns batting and fielding. The bat is wider and flatter than a baseball bat, and while the ball is similar in circumference and weight to a baseball, it’s made of leather and has a seam of string running through the middle. The TCL, like other leagues, also has a separate hard tennis ball competition, which uses a much lighter ball.
Batters and the catcher, called a wicketkeeper, wear gloves, but outfielders aren’t allowed to; they field bare-handed. The batters also wear leg pads and grilled helmets.
Batters can score runs by hitting the ball out of the boundary or by running between two sets of three wickets placed at either end of the 22-yard pitch. The bowler—what baseball fans might call a pitcher—makes six deliveries in an “over” and wants to minimize the number of runs the other team scores in each. A bowler can dismiss a batter by hitting the wickets or if a fielder catches the ball. Once 10 batters are dismissed, the inning ends, even if not all allotted overs are bowled.
These are high-scoring affairs; the average score per inning in the most popular version of cricket, 20-over or T20, is a little more than 150 runs.
In the last decade, Morrisville has made it onto the world cricket map, and Church Street is a place where top cricketers come to make a name for themselves.
The TCL now has over 600 official teams and more than 3,000 registered players. And in 2021, USA Cricket launched Minor League Cricket, a group of 26 teams that includes the Morrisville Raptors. The Raptors finished second in the Southern Division in the first two seasons of the league. There’s also now a Junior Championship, with five age categories beginning at under 11.
“When I first came here, we had to go to other states to play any competitive cricket,” said Baig. “Now people from all over North Carolina, and America, are coming here to play the game.”
A Growing Sport
The popularity of cricket is growing across America. The number of people who regularly watch cricket increased from 30,000 in 2006 to 24 million as of last year. While the sport is still mostly played by immigrants from the subcontinent or the Caribbean, there is at least one prominent exception in Morrisville.
Mark Stohlman, who plays for the TCL’s Chikky Chikky Boom Boom, grew up playing baseball. His interest in cricket grew with its rise at Church Street Park.
In the first few years, Stohlman used to just watch the game and ask about the rules while chatting with the fans. He started playing six years ago. And before an arm injury reduced his game time, the 64-year-old was a regular feature in the league’s leather and hard tennis ball competitions.
“I can no longer hit a six over long-on or long-off, but I can hit behind the wicket. I quite enjoy the reverse sweep,” said Stohlman, referring to the cricket shot that requires quick, unorthodox footwork, often catching the bowler unaware.
Stohlman watches the Indian Premier League every season and is a big fan of Indian superstar and former World Cup-winning captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who has retired from international play, but still plays in the Indian Premier League. “Being an M.S. myself, I have been rooting for the old guy!” he added with a grin.
Stohlman, who was wearing a Morrisville Raptors jersey, also happens to be the former mayor of Morrisville, under whom the town council approved the pitch at Church Street Park.
The city was looking to add four fields for baseball and softball, he said as we talked on a park bench. “If you were a serious baseball player as a kid, you would go to a bigger town, Cary or West Raleigh, to get really good competitive baseball,” he said. “So baseball was falling out a bit here.”
Cricket, though, “was taking off at the time.” The town decided to slightly increase the size to make it a multipurpose field, where soccer, volleyball, softball, and other games could be played. In the middle, the town designated a cricket pitch.
Two years later, the International Cricket Council (ICC), the official governing body of the sport, visited Church Street Park to evaluate the field’s potential for international contests. West Indies cricket legend Alvin Kallicharran, who now coaches young cricketers in Morrisville, was instrumental in bringing the ICC officials to see what North Carolina had to offer.
While the United States has been an ICC associate member since 1965, it has only become visible on the international cricket stage in recent years. Central Broward Park in Lauderhill, Florida, has hosted international matches featuring top-tier teams such as New Zealand, Sri Lanka, West Indies, and India since 2010.
But Church Street Park’s initial bid faced a stumbling block.
“The pitch was garbage,” Stohlman recalled. For starters, the soil did not have the right composition for a cricket pitch, and needed clay from another part of the country. The sod had to be brought in line with international standards. “There was a lot of work put in on the pitch to get international recognition.”
Indiana clay was brought in, along with world-renowned pitch curator David Agnew from Australia to oversee construction. The bid paid off, and Morrisville was picked to host the 2018 regional qualifiers for the ICC World Cup.
But days before the matches were scheduled to start, Hurricane Florence hit, dumping 20 inches of rain on Morrisville.
The entire field was flooded, and volunteers affiliated with the TCL worked day and night to ensure the games went ahead as planned from September 20—which formally put Church Street Park, and Morrisville, on the world cricket map.
A Draw for Elite Players
Hosting international contests gave the TCL a major boost, and a growing number of residents from the region began taking up cricket.
The league now has four formats: a 40-over called the Premier League, a 20-over league known as T20, a 10-over, and a hard tennis ball format. There are three tournaments each year across the formats, in spring, summer, and fall.
“We also have a winter tournament if the temperature stays above 40. That’s for the crazy cricket enthusiasts who want to play even in the winter,” said TCL President Vinod Katragunta as he gave a tour of Church Street Park.
The growing enthusiasm for the sport has meant fast expansion. Right across the street from the main ground is Shiloh Park, where coaches train aspiring cricketers. In addition to Kallicharran, other Caribbean cricketers have moved to Morrisville to coach young kids and participate in Minor Cricket League.
Among these is Ryan Wiggins, who plays for the Raptors and coaches school-aged players. Wiggins has also played in the Caribbean Premier League, a top-tier franchise league hosted by the West Indies.
“Morrisville is on the right path as far as cricket is concerned,” Wiggins said. “We just need to keep working on the kids and help them grow.”
Wiggins is holding a session with fellow West Indian Andre Dwyer, whose coaching pedigree includes coaching global superstar Andre Russell when he was first starting off at Clarendon College in Jamaica. “I produced a lot of national players back home. My ultimate goal here is to produce national players for the U.S. team,” said Dwyer.
Both Dwyer and Wiggins believe that cricket is poised to take off in the United States thanks largely to the launch of Major League Cricket (MLC) in 2023, which features many cricketing superstars.
The league was founded following a $120 million investment from big names in the tech and media industries, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Grand Prairie Stadium in Texas and Church Street Park jointly hosted the inaugural season, and seven of the 19 matches took place in Morrisville, which can hold up to 3,500 fans.
Opening season featured six teams: the San Francisco Unicorns, Washington Freedom, Seattle Orcas, MI New York, Los Angeles Knight Riders, and Texas Super Kings. The latter four are affiliated with Indian Premier League franchises. Over 70,000 spectators turned up for the games in the two cities, while the live coverage was broadcast in 87 countries, generating a total revenue of $8 million for the inaugural season of the league.
“The MLC is absolutely on point,” said Wiggins. “It is at par with franchise tournaments of international recognition around the world.”
The games in Morrisville featured global superstars and served some nail-biting contests. The MI New York versus Seattle Orcas game yielded almost 400 runs between the two sides, with South Africa’s power hitter Heinrich Klaasen scoring a mammoth 110 runs off a mere 44 balls. Klaasen continued his all-out attacking display during the World Cup in India, where South Africa were one of the four semifinalists.
Lance Brown, who was hired for the maintenance of the pitch at Church Street Park, first heard of cricket during his job interview.
“My first three days at the job I was like, wow, I can’t believe the amount of work that goes into maintaining the field,” Brown said as he sat on a roller, which he was moving up and down the pitch. But the atmosphere and festivity of cricket captivated him. “It was like other American sports in terms of competitiveness.”
The Next Generation
The major league games drew capacity crowds, and for young fans like 11-year-old Harsh Vardhan, it was a chance to see international superstars in action.
The sixth grader is a student of Dwyer and Wiggins and watched all the major league games. He can rattle off stats, particularly when it comes to his favorite cricketers, Heinrich Klaasen and Trent Boult. The latter, from New Zealand, took the most wickets in the league this year. “He got 22 wickets in seven matches in the MLC,” recounts Vardhan with nonchalant accuracy.
Vardhan started playing leather ball cricket two years ago. Like many kids of Indian heritage, his parents introduced him to the game at an early age. His father not only was an avid watcher but also played, and now Vardhan competes in the Minor League Jr. He has lofty ambitions for the sport.
“My goal is to score 1,000 runs in the junior league,” he said. “I want to play in the MLC, at least, and for the USA.”
A number of young TCL players have already graduated to the major leagues, including Sanjay Stanley, who has been the vice captain of the national under-19 team, along with Abhiram Bolisetty, Aditya Gupta, and Rohan Phadke.
The women’s league has done even better, with Bhumika Bhadriraju and Geetika Kodali playing for the U.S. women’s national team.
Kodali, a 19-year-old all-rounder and former captain of the national under-19 team, began playing cricket at the age of 11 in California, but moved to North Carolina in 2019 to take the next step in her cricketing career.
“This was the main reason for my move,” she said. “It has helped me build my skills through training programs and coaching sessions offered on Church Street.”
She cites the youth training offered in Morrisville, and the fact that it draws teams from all of the United States, and the fact that TCL offers separate competitions for young women.
“With the increasing diversity in the United States, where cricket is more popular in certain immigrant communities, more girls from those backgrounds are taking up the sport,” Kodali said.
Still, a lot more can be done to promote cricket, she said, such as reserving grounds for youth cricket, launching more youth training programs, and introducing cricket in schools.
Kodali believes that while traditional American sports, especially baseball, remain popular in the region, cricket is fast catching up.
“Cricket is widely followed,” she said. “If introduced into schools with a good program structure, it will appeal to a diverse population.”
The World Stage
Cricket will get another big boost in 2024 when the United States co-hosts the T20 World Cup with the West Indies.
When the ICC first announced the hosts in November 2021, there were concerns about U.S.A. Cricket’s viability, ranging from a financial crunch—the organization is reportedly $650,000 in debt and in a funding dispute with the ICC—to a lack of facilities.
But the ICC confirmed in July that the United States was on deck. And in September, the council announced the three American venues where the matches will take place: Central Broward Park in Florida, Grand Prairie Stadium in Texas, and Eisenhower Park in New York.
Not being named a World Cup venue was a major disappointment for Morrisville, but TCL officials acknowledge why Church Street Park did not get the final nod. While the field and pitch are undoubtedly of a global standing, the same cannot be said of the infrastructure around them. For one, there are no media facilities to properly broadcast international contests.
“I had to learn camerawork on my own and have taught others the same way as well,” said Baig, the production manager. “Even the camera that we use for our livestream on YouTube is placed at an angle and not right in front of the pitch as it should be.”
Even more critically, there aren’t dressing rooms or even practice pitches. “When the MLC teams came to play here, they could not practice on the ground and had to play straight away,” said Katragunta. “The only practice they had was in grounds in other parts of the area.”
Stohlman concedes where they fall short. “We don’t have 30,000 seats here,” he said, nor does it look as big and dramatic on TV as other venues. “However, I will plead like anything to get a few practice matches played here before the World Cup.”
Eisenhower Park also lacked the facilities, but a 34,000-seat stadium is under construction. Grand Prairie and Broward are also undergoing major development ahead of the World Cup.
“They could have done the same here,” said TCL executive committee member Swethan Srinivasan. “We already have much infrastructure in place, and a world-class cricket field.”
Proximity to cricket fans of Indian subcontinent heritage may have also tilted it toward New York, Miami, and Dallas.
But North Carolina fans hope the World Cup is just the first opportunity to show that the U.S. is a player on the international cricket stage. The Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 will also be the first to include cricket.
Last year, Major League Cricket announced it was making a $110 million investment in eight cricket venues across the U.S., including Church Street. Work has already started on natural turf nets, which would allow players to practice on pitches resembling those on the cricket field, increasing spectator capacity, and more parking.
As we spoke beside the pitch, Srinivasan said that he’d passed a plot of land similar in size to Church Street Park earlier that day on his way to an appointment in Cary, which had been leveled for new playing fields. The town hasn’t finalized plans for it yet. But that was also the case in Morrisville a decade ago.
“Who knows, maybe in a year and a half we might have a facility like Church Street Park, which is really good for more cricket.”
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid is a Pakistani journalist who writes about politics and culture for a number of global publications. He has reported on sports in the United States, United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Russia, and Sri Lanka, among other places.