Cricket Gaining Ground in Texas

It’s a sweltering July afternoon in Texas, with the temperature climbing above 90 degrees. Seemingly oblivious to the heat, about 7,000 die-hard fans of all ages have packed this sold-out cricket stadium on the outskirts of Dallas. They’re waving yellow flags, blowing yellow whistles, and beating drums to cheer on their hometown team, the Texas Super Kings, whose players are clad in bright-yellow uniforms.

When one of the team’s batters connects on a booming “six,” cricket’s answer to a home run, fireworks explode, frenzied fans roar with delight, and players share high-fives.

This unbridled passion for cricket is commonplace in England, where the game originated, and in India and Pakistan, where enthusiasm for the world’s second-most popular sport (after soccer) approaches a religious fervor. And now it’s finally making serious inroads with American sports fans, with Texas playing a starring role.

Cricket fever

Fans cheers on the Texas Super Kings at a match in July 2023. Photo by AP Photo/LM Otero

Major League Cricket (MLC) debuted in the U.S. last summer, and much of the action unfolded in North Texas at Grand Prairie Stadium, a former minor-league baseball park in the Dallas suburb of Grand Prairie that the MLC spent $20 million to renovate. That’s where the July game took place, with the Super Kings locked in a knockout battle against the visiting MI New York club.

Despite a great opening series of at-bats, the Super Kings eventually fell to New York, who ultimately won the inaugural MLC championship. “It was heartbreaking,” says Calvin Savage, a South African who plays for the Super Kings. “We had an unbelievable squad.”

But the Texas team will have another chance at the championship this summer and beyond, as cricket fever continues to heat up in the state and across the country. The Grand Prairie stadium served as one of the host venues for the ICC Cricket World Cup, which is being played in the West Indies and the U.S. (for the first time) through June.

Super Kings fan holding up a sign that reads "Finally cricket in USA!"

A Super Kings fan shows his excitement over Major League Cricket's debut. Photo by Andy Mead/SPORTZPICS for MLC

At the quadrennial competition, the best players in the world are competing for international glory. And on the heels of the World Cup, MLC will fire up its second season on July 5, with the championship game on July 28. As in 2023, the same 6 MLC teams (Dallas, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.) will vie for the championship. MLC played 19 matches last year and scheduled 25 for this season, with 16 of them in Grand Prairie while the league works to add other venues.

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Childhood dreams

Fans wave flags in the Grand Prairie Stadium stands.

Fans filled the stands for all 12 games that Grand Prairie Stadium hosted in Major League Cricket's inaugural season. Photo by AP Photo/LM Otero

Fans like Gangs Hardiwari couldn’t be more excited to see cricket gaining momentum stateside. An India native who has lived in Dallas for a decade, Hardiwari was happily beside himself over the arrival of the Texas team. Like many young South Asians, he played cricket as a boy and followed the sport obsessively into adulthood, spending his spare time traveling to games at home and abroad, and even refereeing local leagues in Dallas for the past 5-plus years.

Hardiwari cheered on the Texas team with family and friends at 3 games in Grand Prairie last year, and this year he planned his work travel to ensure he could attend World Cup matches. He will also be in the stands rooting for the Super Kings this season.

“When I first came to this country, I was very concerned about not having cricket,” Hardiwari says. “It was the one activity I did for myself. I wasn’t even sure there would be an adult city league to play in. So I was absolutely overjoyed to hear that Dallas was one of the six places to have Major League Cricket.

Fans show their support for the Super Kings before a 2023 match against the Washington Freedom. Photo by Andy Mead/SPORTZPICS for MLC

“I was worried the level of play might not be as high, but was surprised to see the performance was topflight. It’s very close to the experience you can have in India at the stadium,” he says.

Indeed, the Grand Prairie matches feature some of the same stars who take the field in India. The Texas team has ties to the Chennai Super Kings of India’s powerhouse Indian Premier League (IPL), a showcase for the best cricketers from around the world. Other MLC teams have similar IPL ties. These relationships provide a link for top-notch international talent to appear in the stateside league, where they put on quite a show.

This season, New Zealander Daryl Mitchell, one of Chennai’s power hitters, will play alongside Super Kings captain Faf du Plessis, a South African who is among the IPL’s most celebrated stars. So will Milind Kumar, a skilled cricketer from India.

At IPL matches, the atmosphere in the stands is raucous and loud, resembling a rock concert. Texas fans crowding into Grand Prairie Stadium are ready to rock, too.

The sports editor for D Magazine, the Dallas city magazine, attended a game last season and, in an online story, described the crowd “as more than 7,000 people losing their minds.” More than 90% were South Asians, he noted, so it was no surprise that a DJ played Indian music. He labeled the experience “a wonderful night.”

Concession offerings add a South Asian touch, too, with options like biryani rice dishes, chicken tikka, samosas, and even an Indian-style lager.

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Betting on success

Lahiru Milantha of the Super Kings bats during a 2023 match against the Washington Freedom. Photo by Andy Mead/SPORTZPICS for MLC

Cricket is played with 11 men per side across a broad oval, where batters with paddle-like bats try to protect wickets that bowlers (pitchers) try to knock down. The rules are complex, so newcomers to the sport can find themselves baffled.

As opposed to multiday contests, which are still enjoyed across the British commonwealth nations, MLC matches follow a format that shortens the time frame to a TV-friendly 3.5 hours (last summer’s MLC games were televised on CBS Sports and broadcast to 87 countries).

Texans’ enthusiasm for the sport reflects the state’s increasing diversity. According to the latest U.S. Census, about a half-million Indian Americans live in Texas—a major reason Houston and Dallas boast thriving amateur leagues.

Take into consideration global citizens hailing from cricket-friendly countries across Africa and the Caribbean, and a Texas team in a professional league seems like a natural fit. Yet MLC’s success is not a given, with earlier attempts to launch professional cricket stateside failing in 2004 and 2009.

Super Kings captain Faf du Plessis catching the ball.

Super Kings captain Faf du Plessis makes a catch. Photo by Ron Gaunt/SPORTZPICS for MLC

But this go-round, a fast-growing fan base in the U.S. coupled with start-up MLC investments of about $120 million have given the sport real traction in the land of Friday Night Lights and beyond.

In 2023, Grand Prairie reportedly sold out all 12 matches it hosted, helping MLC beat its revenue projections in its first year. Forbes reports the league took in about $8 million, which was “more than we anticipated,” San Francisco Unicorns co-owner Anand Rajaraman told reporters.

“Of course, Texas stepped up,” says Dallas-based tech investor and philanthropist Anurag Jain. He and his business partner, Ross Perot Jr., co-own the Texas team in partnership with the Chennai Super Kings. Born in Saharanpur and raised in Chennai (formerly known as Madras), Jain played cricket as a youth but pursued engineering in college because there was no money to be made as a cricket player.

After earning his undergraduate degree in India, Jain came to the U.S. to study business in the 1990s. He missed attending cricket matches and rarely found any on TV, so he dreamed of bringing the sport to America. When he was approached in 2019 to join a group of businessmen proposing a professional U.S. cricket league, Jain leaped at the chance.

Devon Conway and Mohammad Mohsin high fiving.

Texas Super Kings players Devon Conway and Mohammad Mohsin celebrate a good play during a 2023 match against the LA Knight Riders. Photo by Ron Gaunt/SPORTZPICS for MLC

“There’s demand in this market for good-quality cricket,” says Jain. Even though the Super Kings ended their inaugural season with a 3-4 record, he still beams with pride over what they accomplished. “The most important things were the quality of the product, viewership on TV, the in-fan experience at the stadium, which can always be improved, and the game itself, which had to be of the highest quality—and that’s what people came to watch.”

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Batter up!

At Sixes Social Cricket, pretend you're a cricket player at bat and see how many points you can score. Photo courtesy Sixes Social Cricket

Want to try your hand at cricket’s demanding underhand batting style? Consider a stop at Sixes Social Cricket, a restaurant and bar with 6 cricket “batting cages” that opened in The Colony, north of Dallas, last summer. It’s the first U.S. outpost of a U.K.–based company with multiple locations in England.

A bowler—cricket’s pitcher—is shown on a screen and a machine behind the screen spits the ball onto the turf. The batter scores varying points by knocking the ball into different zones, protecting the wickets.

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Coming soon

A second U.S. professional cricket league is scheduled to debut in Dallas in early October. The new National Cricket League will bring together 6 teams, representing Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, according to the league’s CEO, Azhar Qasmi.

The teams will feature U.S. and international professionals, Qasmi says, and all games will be played initially at cricket grounds now under construction at Roland G. Parrish Park south of downtown Dallas.