From Streets to Stadiums: New York’s South Asian Community Embraces the T20 World Cup with Nostalgia and Connection

On a warm summer afternoon in May, Anjum Sabar, the captain of Pak America Cricket Club, watched his team play against Hawks Cricket Club on a green field at Eisenhower Park in Long Island, New York. The match was part of the ongoing ICC Men’s T20 World Cup and took place near the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, one of the venues for the tournament.

As workers put the finishing touches on the purpose-built stadium, which will host cricket matches featuring teams like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh in the coming weeks, two teams of semi-professional cricketers of South Asian descent played nearby. Sabar, a 43-year-old businessman who moved to the US from Pakistan in 1998, started playing cricket with Pak America a year after his arrival. His wife Sadaf Sabar knows not to ask for his help on weekends as he spends his Sundays playing the game he grew up with in Pakistan at various parks in New York.

Sabar recalls never having been to a stadium to watch a cricket match before. In Pakistan, cricket matches were always watched on television at their family home in Sialkot – a city known for being the country’s top sports equipment manufacturing center. He remembers watching games on TV and playing them on streets like many other kids growing up there.

Sami Khan, one of Sabar’s teammates, takes a break from playing cricket at Kissena Park in Queens after a match on a sunny day. For New York’s South Asian community, this T20 World Cup has brought cricket back “home,” providing them with a sense of nostalgia and connection to their roots through their love for the sport.