‘Texas is heartbeat of US cricket but New York is where money is’: Thiru Kumaran, former India player traces his journey as grassroots coach in Dallas

A friend had asserted to me that Dallas is the best place for cricket in the US but there was not much cricket at all here when I came! Another friend asked me if could coach one of his kids and that’s how Kumaran became Coach Kenny here in US. Slowly the word spread around that a former India player is coaching in the region; most of those who turned up were adults as not many kids were taking up the sport. It was the story until 2013.

I had even begun to work in an IT company just like any other Indian expat as the coaching sessions were in the evenings. By 2014, though, a lot more kids began to show interest in getting coached. I had to take the decision of turning into a full-time professional coach and by 2016 it became clear to me that I couldn’t work in the IT field anymore as I had begun coaching 35-34 at the academy. So I plunged into coaching full time. It wasn’t hard to choose because despite whatever happened with my career, my love for the game was still intact. Also I saw it as a social responsibility because if I don’t coach, the kids would have moved away from the sport.

There was no organised set-up in the US, then. The USA Cricket was going through its own share of issues, and I had a first-hand experience of it when former India player Robin Singh was the head coach of the US team. He asked me to help around a bit. There was no real development happening. It was just a case of your name being used for whatever they were doing. And once they got more money, they went for different coaches. It was one of the other reasons why I was just keen on coaching the kids and spreading the game here. It was relatively a tough route, but one that I felt was the right one to take.

In 14 years of my coaching here, not a single US native has enrolled at my academy, which just shows how cricket is still limited to the sub-continent crowd. Texas is home to not just the Indian diaspora who work in the IT companies but has a real sub-continent feel because of the presence of a lot of people from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. They would form teams and play cricket over the weekends. They all shared one common factor. All the kids came to the academy because their dads couldn’t fulfil their dream of playing cricket when they left their countries. Cricket was also seen as a connector to their roots.

It gave kids the chance to socialise with like-minded people. At schools most of them take up basketball and American football, but these sports don’t come naturally to us. You need to be at least 6ft to be a decent basketball player here. And if it is American football, you need to be really strong. As Indians we don’t have that. So cricket was ideal. There is a beautiful connection between Indians and cricket, even in a place like Texas where there are not favourable conditions to play throughout the year. But once they pick up the bat or ball, kids don’t ever want to keep it down. It is in our blood I guess.

Infrastructure wise, though, there is still plenty to do. In Texas, we still don’t have turf pitches. We play on concrete pitches by rolling a mat on top of it. The grounds are maintained by the city. The adult league and the youth league share the ground space, but soon we are going to face a nightmare. The youth league is picking up pace and has around 51 teams in Dallas alone and next year it will be even more. But we don’t have enough grounds. We have private investors showing interest and hopefully we will have more grounds to play.

As a coach, my priorities here are totally different to what it would have been at grass-roots level in India. Since there is no proper organisation, there is no real cricket culture. You also have to deal with over-enthusiastic parents who feel they can coach just by watching the game on television.

So at our academy with Halhadar Das (former Odisha captain), a lot of time and focus goes into building a cricket culture — punctuality, professionalism, loyalty. Since there is no professional set-up, it is giving space to amateurish stuff. As much as playing, the practice sessions are important but sometimes parents and kids take it casually. They will skip but want to turn up and play the game straightaway. And if we don’t allow them, they move to a different academy and the story repeats there. This culture has to change. The process that goes into making a cricketer is still missing. And here, the academies are doing what the state associations do in India.

In the last two-three years a number of academies are popping up to cater to the interest of the Indian diaspora. Earlier, ours was the only one in Texas, but there are two more now. But the issue is, we are all restricted in terms of coaches. When you don’t have coaches, you can’t operate an academy.

There is huge disappointment among the Indian diaspora in Texas that none of India matches of the T20 world cup are scheduled here. Texas has been the heartbeat of the sport in the US. But, all the money is in New York. We are disappointed, but to get money into the game, you need to have cricket in New York. It makes sense from an operational point of view.

Every year, cricket is growing in the US. Major League Cricket receives good turn-out and is already a hit among the cricket-starved South Asian population. There is no question about it. Just before the T20 World Cup began, the MLC got List A status, which is huge. But from my experience, I still believe you still need someone strong to run cricket. You have MLC, which is a private entity, trying to take over the sport, instead of working closely with the USA Cricket.

Given how it has panned out so far, the T20 World Cup just seems to be the kick start that the US needed.

As told to Venkata Krishna B

(The writer is a former India cricketer, who played 8 ODIs between 1999-2000. He also played 31 FC matches for Tamil Nadu)