LIVE: USA vs Pakistan – ICC T20 World Cup 2024

On a cool Sunday afternoon in May, Anjum Sabar – captain of Pak America Cricket Club – watched on as his team batted against Hawks Cricket Club on a grassy field at Eisenhower Park in Long Island, New York.

The match – part of New York’s Commonwealth Cricket League (CCL) – was being played a stone’s throw away from what is now the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, one of the venues for the in-progress ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.

As workers applied finishing touches to the purpose-built modular stadium – set to host cricket’s South Asian powerhouses India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh – two teams comprising semi-professional cricketers of South Asian heritage played the game nearby.

Sabar, a 43-year-old businessman, migrated to the United States from Pakistan in 1998 and began playing cricket with Pak America a year later. Sadaf Sabar, his wife of 14 years, knows better than to ask him for a helping hand on weekends because every Sunday, Sabar heads out to different parks in New York to play the game he grew up with in Pakistan.

“Back home” cricket matches were always watched on the television at his family home in Sialkot, a northeastern Pakistani city that is renowned as the country’s leading sports equipment manufacturing hub.

“I have never been to the stadium to watch a match,” Sabar tells Al Jazeera while watching his Pak America teammates.

“We watched the game on TV and played it in the streets – like all Pakistani kids do.”

Read more: T20 World Cup brings cricket ‘home’ for New York’s South Asian community