Cricket is Wicket
By Lakshmi Gandhi, Roisin O’Connor-McGinn and Dana L. Oliver
Dressed in white with their bats in hand, Aviation High School’s inaugural cricket team prepare for a match against DeWitt Clinton High in Flushing Meadow Park. Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Jamaican Patois, and Guyanese Creole fill the air as warm-ups begin.
In April, New York City became the first school district in the United States to introduce cricket as a varsity sport. The game is one of the most enduring legacies of the British Empire and the city’s 16 high school teams are primarily made up of students of South Asian and Caribbean descent. The young athletes see playing the game as a continuation of the cultural traditions their parents instilled in them.
“Cricket, it’s from my native country,” said Vik Singh, Aviation High School team’s student manager, who is of Guyanese descent. “My dad played. And basically everybody before him played cricket, so it’s good to know that I am also playing cricket.”
Widely accepted as the world’s second most popular sport after soccer, cricket is unfamiliar to many Americans. In New York City’s West Indian and South Asian communities, however, the game continues to be a treasured export from back home. Ozone Park and Richmond Hill bars advertise televised matches in their windows and many residents sign up for satellite television just to follow their favorite teams.
After observing immigrants playing the game in the outer boroughs, Eric Goldstein, the chief executive for School Support Services of the Public School Athletic League, was convinced there was an interest in the sport among high schoolers.
“The people who are playing are either recent immigrants or first generation Americans from immigrant families where cricket was very much part of the sporting culture of where they come from,” said Goldstein. “What we wanted to do is to embrace that — that’s what New York, America, is all about — it’s all about immigration and embracing change and welcoming the new groups.”