On a Monday night in October in western Sydney, a social game of duct-tape cricket served as a vision of the sport’s new era. The tennis ball was wrapped in electrical tape, as is usual in the Karachi-born variant. The players were largely of Pakistani descent. Families watched, children played along the boundary.
Otherwise it was a normal game of the accessible form of cricket that has proven popular throughout South Asia since its development in Pakistan 60 years ago. What was different was how Cricket Australia viewed it. There was $3,000 in prize money, it was held under the lights at Blacktown International Sports Park, Cricket NSW’s main venue, and the match, won by the Cheetahs over the Falcons, decided the first winner of the trophy that bears the club’s name. BBL Sydney Thunder. .
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Newly appointed Australian Cricket Chief James Allsopp said the head office would never have supported these types of forms of play in the past, but now recognizes they are key to making the sport more inclusive. “Ten years ago, we almost ignored it and didn’t respect it,” Allsopp said. (People thought) it’s not real cricket and that can be put to the side, and it’s not part of Australian cricket.”
Now, social cricket, winter leagues and The last man standing (an eight-player variant in which the last batsman not out can continue) are central to the game’s strategy, taking into account the passion of players with South Asian origins. “I feel like the game has come so far that anyone who plays it loves it, we want to hug them, support them and put our arms around them,” Allsopp said.
The youth teams are packed with Indian, Pakistani, Afghan, Nepalese, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan names, and these social, indoor and non-traditional competitions are played throughout the year. However, Allsopp, who helped prepare the sport’s multicultural action plan last year before taking up his current role in July, warned there was still work to be done to ensure representative teams reflected modern Australia.
Participation in Australian cricket by people with South Asian origins has doubled to 20% in the last five years, but among those on state contracts the proportion is just 5%, prompting an investigation into why.
“Our hypothesis is that South Asian communities are really focused on education and sometimes that means they can’t put as much energy into cricket,” he said. “We want to understand this better, if that’s the case, and how we can support it.”
The goal, set out in the multicultural action plan, of increasing the proportion of state actors to 8% by 2027 appears almost impossible to achieve, and a South Asian talent camp planned for this year will not launch until complete the investigation. . However, in the lower age groups players from these cultural groups are prominent. The Greater Victoria men’s under-19 team this summer includes five players with South Asian origins, and there are six on the women’s team. Numbers on Victorian boys’ and girls’ under-12 school teams are almost double that.
Pakistan-born Australian Test star Usman Khawaja said at last year’s launch of the multicultural action plan that “cricket in Australia has been a very white-dominated sport” and revealed he challenged Cricket’s chief executive Australia, Nick Hockley, to be more ambitious in this space.
Ahead of a summer that includes the first five-match Test series against India since 1992, Allsopp said promising players were emerging in the under-19 age groups, including two in the men’s program and three in the women’s program (Hasrat Gill is the captain). and while the 2027 target may not be met, he hoped there would be an increase.
“Part of it is timing, and I think we would love to move faster, but each year there are only x amount of contracts, and the players who have contracts are playing well, so they don’t move,” he said. “We just want to ensure that we give all players, and particularly our talented South Asian players, every opportunity to fulfill their contracted roles when opportunities arise.”
Promising cricketers in their third year have traditionally gone on to play grade cricket, and Allsopp said this part of the game has been slow to adapt to participation trends.
“I call them influence roles, so club presidents, club treasurer, vice president, we’re still very underrepresented,” he said. “Those community roles and club presidents, those are the roles that I think we still have work to do.”
UNSW Sydney cricketer Suffan Hassan said he has seen the atmosphere of the club change over his decade playing with seniors, right down to the barbecue menu.
“They made it more inclusive in terms of having vegetarian food and also halal food,” he said. “It’s not just about trying to engage more South Asians, I think it’s really about Caucasians, getting them to understand what different cultures are and what’s appropriate and how to make it more inclusive.”
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Hassan works as a multicultural engagement specialist for Cricket NSW and has helped organize social tape cricket games in the Sydney Thunder Tape Ball League, which concluded its first season last month.
“This was my idea, about three or four years ago, when I started at Cricket New South Wales to bring the tape ball league to life,” he said. “A lot of these people just go and play casually on the fields, but it gives them access to play under the lights, playing at Blacktown International Sports Park, which is a first-class venue.”
The Sydney Thunder will host a cricket and cultural festival on Sunday at Drummoyne Oval alongside the WBBL’s clash with the Sydney Sixers, featuring Bhangra dancers, Bollywood dance classes, henna and face painting and duct tape ball games .
