Thriving Cricket League Helps Immigrants Assimilate

West Des Moines is gaining another distinction with a sports league that preserves some of the cultural heritage of workers who have been attracted to the city’s fast-growing IT sector.

The weekend cricket league gives an opportunity for people like Rajesh Chalamalasetti, who works at Principal Financial Group, to get together with others from his native India to play a sport that is very much a part of his cultural heritage, the Des Moines Register reports.

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11. Each team has to bowl and bat. Considered a gentleman’s game, comedian Robin Williams once said “cricket is basically baseball on Valium,” but it is the world’s second-largest sport behind soccer.

“I think sports has that magic where you can connect with people and talk the same common language,” he told the Register. “That is what helps us assimilate with not only our Indian community, but others here in the U.S.”

One of his teammates, Rafeeq Shaik, said that “growing up, every Indian is dreaming of cricket.”

The sport permeates every aspect of Indian culture, said Shaik, an information specialist for Farmers Mutual Hail Insurance.

“We have varied cultures in the country, but the one unifying factor is cricket,” he said. “Regardless of class or creed, the passion for cricket is very high.”

Shaik and Chalamalasetti play for the Avengers, one of eight teams in the Des Moines Cricket League, which is now in its third season. The group’s first post-season competition will take place in September.

Matches in West Des Moines take place on a grassy makeshift field north of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church.

Cricket is growing in popularity in the United States along with the population of immigrants from countries like India, the report said. The first international cricket match was played in the United States in 1844 in New York, but it has been slow to catch on, due in part to the sport’s reputation as a long, drawn-out competition, USA Cricket CEO Darren Beazley said.