Move aside pickleball, it’s time to give another rapidly growing sport in the Puget Sound the limelight. “Cricket has seen an exponential growth in our region,” longtime Bellevue resident Yatin Aras said during an interview with The Urbanist. “The number of cricket teams has grown from six when I played here in the 90s to over 200 teams today across amateur, recreational, and youth leagues.”
This translates to over 3,100 active and organized players in the region, with many more cricketers playing casually and/or unorganized. Growth in the sport is perhaps most pronounced in the youth circuit. “There were no organized youth teams for my sons to play on in 2010. Now there are four youth academies on the eastside with 18 teams,” Aras said.
The expansion of cricket is not just happening for men and boys, but also women and girls teams. There are six womens teams organized in the recreational leagues with a strong pipeline forming with many girls participating in youth leagues and academies. Jivana Aras, Yatin’s daughter, has excelled in the sport, competed on the US’s Under 19 women’s cricket team, and currently plays in the National Women Cricket League.
Despite cricket’s regional rise, Yatin Aras was quick to mention the limited infrastructure to support the cricket community as resulting in “growth [being] severely constrained by the lack of facilities.” Cricket is popular activity in the flourishing South Asian/Desi community of Seattle and the Eastside, thus in the Puget Sound, cricket is an evident parks and racial equity issue.
This dynamic should be a major consideration as some of the largest cities in King County are considering parks levy renewal. Major population centers for the South Asian community like Bellevue and Kirkland are currently working toward new parks levies. A golden goose for parks dollars, Seattle is considering a doubling of their parks levy to $108 million. To keep up with the pace of the cricketing community’s growth, parks levy dollars must follow and flow.
What’s cricket anyways?
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game. If you are new to the game, you can learn more about its rules from the YouTube video below.
