The sounds of cheering crowds and wooden bats connecting with balls filled the air this weekend as a two-day cricket tournament drew dozens of players to Manchester’s Prout Park.
Organizers and players say the sport – which has a huge following in South Asia and other parts of the world – is starting to establish itself in New Hampshire’s biggest city.
“I'm seeing cricket growing, and more people are coming together, participating in tournaments,” said Kamal Maharjan of Nashua, who plays for Manchester Cricket Club. “And hopefully next year will be even bigger than this one.”
Maharjan grew up playing the sport in Nepal, but when he first moved to the U.S. he didn’t see any opportunities to keep playing. So he’s excited to see the sport catching on in New Hampshire.
“It's a great feeling, you know, when you love something and you feel it's flourishing in front of you,” he said.
Manchester now has four organized cricket teams, Maharjan said. Along with his own MCC, which formed in 2022, there’s Sherpa United, Kaizen and Murraa Brothers. This weekend, they faced off against four teams from Boston and one from Worcester, Mass.
Superficially similar to baseball in some respects, cricket involves one team “bowling,” or pitching, the ball to a batter from another team. The batter and a teammate then run back and forth between two wickets – which are a set of three stakes stuck in the ground, with two smaller rods resting on top.
On Saturday afternoon, players in the red jerseys of the Murraa Brothers were fanned out across the park’s baseball field. One player bowled to a batter from the Boston All Stars, who wore green. The batter swung at the ball as it bounced off the ground. Cries of “catch it!” went up whenever the ball flew in the air. Dozens of onlookers cheered when the ball headed outside a marked-off boundary – cricket’s equivalent of a homer, worth six runs.
Other teams watched from tents or sat in the shade at the edge of the field. A food stand set up by a local Nepalese restaurant, Dancing Yeti, served momos and chow mein for lunch.
The tournament offered cash prizes to the top two teams. Organizers said Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais was there to kick things off Saturday morning.
Manish Humagain, a captain with Manchester Cricket Club, helped organize this weekend’s New Hampshire Cricket Tournament. It’s the second one they’ve put on, after a tournament in 2022. He hopes to make it an annual event.
“It's a beautiful sport,” he said. “Cricket is something that brings people together – sports in general, you know.”
Humagain said cricket is “like a religion” in his home country of Nepal. There’s an established cricket league in Massachusetts, but he wants to get more people interested in the sport in New Hampshire.
“That's our goal,” he said. “Bring other teams from outside the state as well. And that's happening slowly. So really excited and looking forward to that.”
There’s no reason the sport can’t spread in the U.S., he said. After all, he noted, the first international cricket match was between the U.S. and Canada in 1844.
Naran Gurung also expressed excitement to see the sport growing in Manchester, where he’s lived for more than 12 years.
“We are playing here for the friendships,” he said. “We encourage all the youth, just engage with playing anything like sports.”
As he watched his teammates from Murraa Brothers play, Gurung said this baseball field isn’t ideal for cricket – the ball doesn’t travel right because the grass is too long. He would like to see the city create a proper cricket pitch.
“We met the Manchester mayor this morning and we talked about it, but I don't know,” he said. “Maybe they're going to think about it.”
