“Last year, when I came (to Berkeley High School), no one was playing…so I had a bat and a friend of mine brought one and I just started playing here. But every day the ball got stuck. We were buying new balls every day from Target. And we just started playing,” BHS sophomore Haroon Khan said. Ta.
Without an official BHS cricket team, players have begun playing on their own outside of mobile classrooms during lunch breaks and after school. These matches remain largely informal, and although cricket clubs have been established by some players, there is still no mass participation.
Khan said he tried to start a cricket club at BHS and received more than 30 applications, but attendance was low, so he decided to focus on enjoying the game itself rather than the club.
“We decided to form a club last year. We achieved that, but not too many people came to our meetings, so we decided to put the club aside and just play. I decided,” Khan said.
Yasir Zada, who frequently attends cricket matches, explained that most of the people he plays with in cricket clubs around campus met through common interests and backgrounds. Zada said most of the cricketers attending the matches are Pakistanis like him, as he learned to play in Pakistan when he was young. “We met in my class and we were from the same country, same language. We just talked. We just became close friends,” Zada said.
Dilawar Shah, another BHS player, learned to play at just 8 years old and plans to continue playing long after graduation. Shah was born in Pakistan and hopes to play for the Pakistan national team one day. This motivates him to practice every day, which is common within the group.
In addition to these informal practices, some players were able to join some club teams in the Bay Area. Zada and Shah say the sport is growing in popularity in Fremont and Dublin. The governing body for these teams, the Bay Area Cricket Alliance (BACA), is based in Milpitas and consists of approximately 80 club teams. Khan plays for two teams. He finds the alternating practice schedule manageable, except for occasional conflicts due to tournaments.
Shah said he plans to talk with the baseball coach about forming a cricket team at BHS later this year. He expects to find many enthusiastic participants, as he sees people playing cricket together after school.