A member of the Greenwood Lions cricket club bats during a recent match against Lexington.
Chris Williams | For the Daily Journal
Local residents out for a walk in Franklin’s Blue Heron Park over the weekend might happen upon a group of two or three dozen men dressed in all white and wonder what on earth is going on.
Cricket hasn’t yet evolved past niche sport status in the United States, but the Greenwood Lions are trying to do their part to change that.
The Lions were formed in 2021 by four local men — including Mohit Nahar and team captain Navjot Virk — who had been playing for another Indianapolis-area club with approximately 30 players but wanted an opportunity to get more playing time. They have been competing in the Midwest Cricket Tournament (MCT) every year since, sharing the field at Blue Heron Park with three other area teams.
A sport with roots in England dating back to at least the late 17th century, cricket spread to the British colonies and became especially popular in India, where it enjoys the same dominant spectator-sport status that football has in America. Not coincidentally, all of the players on the Greenwood Lions are native Indians.
“Back home, everybody plays every day, Monday through Sunday, because cricket is in our blood,” Virk said. “Like how people love their baseball and American football, we are crazy about cricket.”
“It’s like the NBA,” Nahar added.
Cricket bears at least some resemblance to baseball, with batters, runs and innings all part of the lexicon. The scoring is more layered, however. Runs in cricket are scored when a batsman hits the ball and successfully reaches the other end of the pitch — the 22-yard strip between the two sets of wickets — before the fielding team gets the ball back to one of the wickets. A batter can also score four or six runs in one shot by hitting “boundaries,” the term for hitting the ball beyond the playing circle on the bounce or on the fly.
At the same time, the batting team is trying to avoid losing wickets — which result in a batter leaving the field and being replaced. Once a team has lost 10 wickets in an inning, their turn at bat is finished. Most innings, though, run to completion through a predetermined number of overs — a series of six balls from one bowler to one batter.
The Lions are playing T35 matches in MCT play, meaning each side gets 35 overs during its inning. Such matches typically last approximately eight hours — an eternity by most sporting standards, but light work compared to international test matches that often take five days to complete.
This past Sunday, Greenwood played host to the Lexington Shot Guns, a Kentucky-based squad comprised primarily of Pakistan-born players. The fact that the match ate up almost the entire day didn’t bother the players at all; quite the contrary.
As Nahar noted, most of the Lions are guys in their 30s who are busy with work from Monday through Friday; playing cricket on the weekend is their escape from the weekday tedium.
“This gives us satisfaction,” he said. “When we’re on the field, we forget everything.”
Each of the Lions grew up playing and loving cricket, so it’s not a surprise that they were able to find one another upon moving to the United States. Social media has helped that process considerably.
“When you have a passion, you find someone,” Nahar said.
Cricket has gotten a couple of welcome shots in the arm publicity-wise here this summer.
Last month, the American team pulled off a stunning upset of Pakistan in the T20 World Cup, advancing out of group play and into the Super 8 stage (India defeated South Africa in the championship match, which was played in Barbados; the U.S. co-hosted the tournament along with the West Indies team).
Then on Sunday, while Greenwood was finishing up its match against Lexington, former Australian cricket player Travis Bazzana was taken by the Cleveland Guardians with the first overall pick in the Major League Baseball draft.
As more people with foreign roots come stateside in general and to the Indianapolis area in particular, the sport continues to grow. Cricketers can sometimes be seen utilizing the streets and green spaces in various Johnson County neighborhoods as they find more like-minded players to practice with.
Virk is among those who have noticed an uptick in local cricket activity, and he’s hopeful that it will eventually result in local high schools and colleges adding club, or one day even varsity, teams.
He believes that as people get introduced to it, they’ll get hooked — just like he did as a child.
“It is a very interesting strategy game, and so (many) things to improve in it,” Virk said. “Every day, every game you learn something.”
One of the other big goals for the Lions is to one day find a new home field. In addition to the inconveniences that come with sharing Blue Heron Park with three other teams, the grounds aren’t necessarily ideal for the game — the dimensions are somewhat inaccurate, the field doesn’t drain particularly well after it rains and the pitch is often littered with goose droppings.
But for now, the team will gladly take what it can get. The camaraderie and good times far outweigh any headaches that might come with trying to grow their favorite sport from the ground up in a new place.
Being able to spend an entire Sunday playing with friends makes every match a win, regardless of the final score.
“It’s the fun part of life,” Nahar said.
