I moved to the States when I was 23 years old. While the first few years were dedicated to acclimating myself to the local and professional environment in a new country and focusing on learning new things to build a career, I increasingly felt a strange void of losing some important parts of my identity. I realized, back home, the camaraderie my friends and I shared through the sheer love for sports and other hobbies used to fill my free time with not just a good workout, but also a sense of belonging.
It turns out that it was not just me but also some of my new friends who felt the same despair of a missed connection with sports, mostly with cricket. We took matters into our hands and decided to overcome the first challenge, the lack of a cricket field! In the ‘90s, baseball, tennis, football, and basketball were some of the most prominent sports. Cricket was reputed as a gentleman’s game, started by the British, and too slow for the Americans. But the jugaadu Delhi boy in me didn’t let this stand in our way.
Picture this in 1990: Atlanta’s tennis courts transformed into a playground of Desi cricket euphoria! With sheer ingenuity, we turned tennis balls into cricket balls and created makeshift stumps from anything we could find. And how we got a cricket bat made by a carpenter friend in his house is a story for another day. Our love for the game knew no bounds as we unleashed our inner cricket heroes on those hallowed courts. Under the scorching sun, we swung the bat, bowled wicked googlies, and dived fearlessly to catch every soaring ball. Laughter, cheers, and camaraderie filled the air as we bonded over our shared passion and the joy of Cricket.
Far from the cricketing playgrounds of Delhi, our Desi Cricket League carried the spirit of the game in every match. We celebrated centuries with spicy samosas, coffee, and masala chai. No matter where we played, we brought the energy, the flavour, and the unstoppable spirit of being Indian to every game. I heard recently that a professional cricket league along the lines of IPL is being formed in the US sponsored by Indian CEO club members like Sunder Pichai, Satya Nadella, among others. The news made me feel proud of the foundation that we had laid in the gullies of Norcross in the 1990s.
They often say that one may be taken away from India, but the essence of being Indian can never be taken away from them.
