Americans are suddenly good at cricket. That doesn’t surprise Lexington team

Years before Monank Patel helped guide the United States to an historic international sports upset, fans in Lexington got a chance to see him first hand.

Local cricket players squared off against Patel in 2017 in a field around the corner from the county rec commission’s soccer fields, Mallikarjun Mallipedhi remembers. A few years later, Patel was the captain of the U.S. national cricket team, and scored 50 runs in an upset victory over Pakistan in this summer’s World Cup.

“It was fantastic,” said Mallipedhi, a former captain of local side the Lexington Lions. “When we saw that America is beating Pakistan, we were celebrating here.”

Mallipedhi is one of several Midlands residents who have made this niche sport — one of the most watched in the world, but almost unknown in the U.S. — into a weekly passion in, of all places, Lexington, S.C.

The sport originated in England and then spread around the world along with the British Empire. Today it’s a major sport in the West Indies, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. But cricket is most popular in the populous countries of South Asia — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka — where millions of people attend cricket matches annually.

At the cricket ground near the Gibson Road Soccer Complex, many of the players share ties to this region, with a smattering of cricketers from the West Indies. For Lexington locals, the game continues to be a bit of a curiosity, even as the sport enjoyed a moment of notoriety this summer thanks to Team USA’s success.

“There are some people who come and ask how it works,” said Sriram Narisetty, the president of Palmetto Sports Inc., which sponsors the cricket ground on Chariot Street. “Some of them are interested, come to watch when there are tournaments… But so far, we don’t see any American people who come there to play.”

Cricket is similar to baseball in that it involves hitting a small ball with a bat. Two batsmen (not batters) stand at either end of a 22-yard “pitch” and take turns batting at a ball bowled by the fielding team. The batsmen score runs — sometimes hundreds in a game — by running back and forth on the pitch after hitting the ball into play.

Unlike baseball, there’s no foul territory. The ball can be hit anywhere within a wide oval around the pitch, and the batsmen remain in the game until they are got out. The team on offense bats until all its players are out or until facing a set number of balls, depending on the kind of game being played.

At the ground recently, players warmed up by bowling a tennis ball down a bare concrete pitch toward the batsman, while the group awaited the arrival of a mat to cover the pitch for the coming season. The ball was hit by a flat bat made of imported Indian willow toward a stand shaded under the town water tower. Ruts were cut into the field by the wheels of trucks cutting donuts after a recent rainstorm.

Narisetty’s group came together a decade ago to work with the Lexington County Recreation Commission and then-Lexington Mayor Steve MacDougall to get a field locally dedicated to the sport.

“We laid out the pitch and everything, and we’ve been playing since then,” said Mallipedhi. “It’s grown a lot. We organize one tournament every year, and other teams also play there.”

Palmetto Sports organizes competitions at the cricket ground every summer, playing as long as the South Carolina weather allows . The latest tournament is scheduled to start this Saturday, with plans for six to seven weeks of league games, playoffs, semi-finals and a championship match at the end of the summer.

The games will assemble local players as the Lexington Lions, often with enough sign-ups to field up to three different teams. Other cricketers from around the Midlands and beyond also come together to play at the ground. Other cricket venues have emerged in Florence and Greenville, Narisetty said, but they’re “not as good as what we have in Lexington.”

“We have around 200 local members,” he said. “We’re getting people from Aiken, Charleston, getting people from Orangeburg, Greenville, Myrtle Beach, to play cricket, because in South Carolina, this is a platform we got in Lexington.”

The group is looking for additional space for practice in the hopes of expanding the number of players and teams they can support. Players here think there’s room for cricket to grow its support in the Midlands.

“We need more grounds, more facilities,” said Venkat Gantannagari, a bowler and top-order batsman for the Lions. “Even though it’s not a major sport here, it has 2 billion fans around the world, and America is a major sports market.”

In addition to its adult leagues, Palmetto Sports Inc. is hosting a kids camp later this fall to introduce a passion for cricket to the next generation. “We all support India, but the kids want support the USA team,” Mallipedhi said. Narisetty said he also hopes to see the Lions organize a women’s team as well.

The locals hope the exploits of Patel and his teammates in making it to the final eight of the T20 World Cup will inspire more people to take up the sport. They take it as a point of pride that in the small community of American cricket, they had a personal connection to the U.S. national team.

“The guy who played with us led us against one of the best teams in the world,” Mallipedhi said of the U.S. win over Pakistan. “We are very proud.”