Cricket, a commonly unknown sport in the U.S., has started to become popular in Montgomery County and all across Maryland.
“In 2012, few cricket enthusiasts got together to raise funds for [the] VHPA [Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America] initiative Support-A-Child (SAC) project supporting underprivileged children in Bharat to provide basic accommodation and education,” the Maryland Cricket League wrote in a press release. “Luckily for them [sic] they found [a] local business community willing and ready to help and that’s how SAC Charity Cricket League was born.”
Many people in Montgomery County have been playing cricket since childhood, as it is a part of their culture.
“I spent my childhood in India, and cricket being a very popular sport there, I started playing right from my school days,” Rockville Challengers captain Purna Uppalapati said.
He then moved to Maryland and found a group of people with a similar interest in cricket. Thus, the team was born.
Even though many people play cricket for fun and in their leisure time, it still requires a lot of effort and commitment.
“It depends on the role of the player on the team. Typically, a player spends four to six hours of practice a week and four hours of game time over the weekend,” Uppalapati said. “Besides that, as part of management—me being the captain and along with two other teammates—we spend 16 to 18 hours a week. It includes additional activities like team [and] player management, game planning, etcetera.”
Cricket’s popularity has spread to the state’s youth in recent years.
“In 2007, we started playing in a league that had six teams. Now the same league has about 30 teams and we play two seasons in a calendar year,” Uppalapati said. “In the last couple of years, cricket has also been introduced at middle [and] high school level and there are few youth leagues happening in the state.”
Cricket was created in 1611, where it was first referred to as an adult sport and later defined in the dictionary as a bat and ball game played by adults on a field. Its spread was slow due to constraints of travel, but it slowly began to gain popularity across the world, a stark contrast to its spread in Maryland and Montgomery County.
With all of these new leagues being created across Maryland, cricket’s spread should accelerate even more throughout the U.S.
Article by Megan Harrington of Richard Montgomery High School
Photo by Avantika Selvarajan of Cabin John Middle School