Under the summer sun, a group of students waits in anticipation for the bowler to pitch the first ball of practice.
The crack of the ball hitting the bat triggers cheers in different languages.
For 30 years, the Wichita State University cricket club has been a place for international students to find a sense of belonging thousands of miles away from home.
“Cricket is more than a religion for all of us,” said the club’s president, Sai Garnepudi. “Growing up that is what we did: Play cricket.”
A lot of Americans are unfamiliar with cricket.Dr. Saad Shafqat, a Pakistani neurologist and cricket writer, said the sport is similar to American baseball.
“Imagine cricket is baseball, but just a more complicated version, where you allow the ball to bounce on the ground surface, and you're able to hit the ball, not just in the diamond, but all around, 360 degrees,” Shafqat said.
Cricket is thesecond-most popular sport in the world. Most of the WSU cricket club is from South Asia, but the sport itself is from England. Its international fanbase is the result of centuries of British colonization.
“Many places where the empire went, it took cricket with it,” Shafqat said. “The Caribbean, some of the African nations, South Africa, Australia, and then it happened in a big way on the Indian subcontinent – India together now along with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal.”
For countries dealing with the aftermath of colonization, the sport became a source of national self-esteem.
Juned Shaikh, a history professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz, said cricket became intertwined with history and politics. Geopolitical rivalries between countries – like India and Pakistan – played out in cricket games.
“That in some way adds to the popularity of cricket because it got tied to identity and the politics of identity,” he said.
When immigrants and international students come to the United States, they bring this part of their identity with them.
“And now what's happening is that the game is now starting to spread beyond just what the Empire had been able to achieve,” said Shafqat, the cricket writer.
Earlier this year, the WSU club worked with the university and the city of Wichita to build its own cricket grounds just minutes away from campus at Dr. Glen Dey Park. Garnepudi, the WSU student, said the new field will help accommodate the club’s rising membership.
Just six years ago, the club only had seven members. Now, it has over 100 and competes in a league against teams from Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas.
The club used to practice at Planeview Park in southeast Wichita. It was only a 14-minute drive from campus, but the team’s limited access to cars made the commute an obstacle to the club’s growth.
“There were days when I used to drive four people, come pick up another four, go drive to come pick up another four,” Garnepudi said.
The university’s director of campus recreation, John Lee, said the university hopes the cricket grounds will help the 3,100 international students feel more at home at WSU. After the field was unveiled in May, the university sent out emails about the field to 108,000 prospective international students.
“Will people come to Wichita State because we have a cricket field? No. Would it potentially keep people staying at Wichita State? Perhaps,” Lee said. “Students study really hard, and they need time to unwind and relax with fellow students.”
Garnepudi said international students have contacted him to ask whether there really is a WSU cricket field.
Being an international student can be an isolating experience. But Garnepudi said the hours the team spends practicing or driving to different states for games helps them form deep connections.
“Playing the game, getting to know each other, getting to know their religion, getting to know their way of living, is really important for you to grow as a person, as a human being,” Garnepudi said.
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