Cricket is not America's pastime.
But this sport is quickly making a distinction in the Valley, starting with increasing membership in the Arizona Cricket Association.
Since 2004, the number of teams in the group has doubled from 10 to 20, Chairman Krishna Parna says.
"We started off with about four or five teams 15 years ago, and now we are a 20-team league," he says.
The association has nearly 500 members, 90 percent from foreign countries, Parna says.
A majority of these players, 80 percent, are international students attending Arizona State University, he says.
"The students of ASU are a major portion of the association," he says. "It's pretty active in the University."
The association's league has two divisions, which play September through May, Parna says. In the summer, it hosts night cricket games.
Cricket is traditionall played in one- and five-day matches, which Parna says deters Americans from participating in and watching the sport. The association's matches are generally one day and last six hours each.
The Twenty20 cricket match, first played in 2003, lasts three hours.
Electrical engineering doctoral candidate and Indian emigrant Karthik Rajagopalan says the new Twenty20 format is providing a reason for Americans to watch and play the game.
"There is a chance for the Twenty20 version to catch on, mainly because people here simply don't have the patience for a one-day or five-day game," he says.
Rajagopalan says he represented his city and university in India before coming to ASU.
Brett Slaven, an ASU business management junior and Zimbabwe emigrant, agrees the new match will help encourage cricket play in the states.
"Twenty20 is nonstop action from beginning to end, and right now it is changing the face of cricket around the world," he says.
Slaven says cricket is picking up in the U.S. because of the multitude of immigrants coming from countries like India and Pakistan.
"Cricket is like a religion there," he says.
And Rajagopalan agrees.
"Growing up in India, you cannot escape from cricket," he says. "Kids always grow up dreaming to represent their nation in cricket."
Anjan Kumar, a computer science graduate student, began playing cricket at four, which he says is normal.
"People adore cricketers more than politicians and film stars," he says.
Kumar says, in addition to intramurals, the Indian Student Association holds tournaments twice a year. This is a testament to its growing popularity, he says.
But it may take some time, he says.
"I tried talking about cricket to a few Americans here, and they feel the game is boring, lengthy and a bit complicated," he says. "They find it hard to understand and they easily lose interest in the game."
Parna says he compares cricket's popularity to soccer, which has grown in recent years with children but has not caught on entirely in the U.S.
"Soccer was never heard of 20 years ago," he says. "It's not going to happen overnight. But our goal is to get it to that level."
