INTERVIEW
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Nah, seriously, cricket? For most of the yesteryear, cricket was never going to make it to the United States of America as a sport, let alone popular.
If anything, modern-day cricket was viewed as a recreational sport that would satisfy the hunger of the Asian diaspora. The screeching halt put by COVID-19 brought the entire cricketing stratosphere to a standstill.
Now, if I had to ask you at that particular point: Would you move to the USA to pursue cricket? Your natural reaction could be to abuse me. Consider these as well: you haven’t been playing for a top-tier team anymore, domestic cricket has paused in India, and you are now married.
More so than before, you would now abuse me to the fullest. But that’s where 27-year-old Harmeet Singh viewed things very differently. You saw the empty glass; he saw that as an opportunity to fill water.
“The Major League looked enticing. I could still pursue my career as a cricketer and keep helping people. When I decided that I would come here with my family to play the sport, it was a big decision and a very emotional one,” Harmeet tells Cricket.com from the Netherlands.
“When I decided to move in 2020, the Major League offered that you could play in a league like the IPL [Major League Cricket], also domestic leagues like Mushtaq Ali [Minor League Cricket], and a lot of options to coach and make a living here as a cricketer. Growing up in India, wanting to play for India, leaving that dream and starting another [American dream] one was tough. I had to do it for my family. I had just got married when the offer came; it was making sense for me,” he rationaled his reason.
Amidst the chaos of COVID-19 and the question mark on cricket’s immediate future in the country, Harmeet asked himself one question, which would set a precedent for the next four years of his life.
‘Where will I be in five years?’ A pretty typical question, don’t you think? But for Harmeet, it started a series of soul-searching activities, including standing in front of the mirror, weighing and contrasting his future with India and America.
“I had to be honest with myself then: I was playing for Tripura then, and Tripura is not a team where the Indian selectors look a lot. I was playing as a professional, and there’s a lot of insecurity about your spot. That insecurity and not playing IPL [Indian Premier League] also drove me. Franchises didn’t have a lot of faith in me because my home state [Mumbai] were not playing me. IPL break was far,” he added.
Over the next four years, here was Harmeet, not just a Minor League winner with the Seattle Thunderbolts but also a proud cog of the United States of America cricket team. It took just one T20 World Cup for the North American giants to paint the town ‘red’, beating cricketing powerhouses like Pakistan and running India ragged till the end.
Try asking Harmeet, ‘Did you really guys visualise beating top teams?’ He will bite your hands off.
“Before the World Cup too, I was very confident of us doing well in the T20 World Cup. It wasn’t just our side, with how the boys were training, with how we were beating sides [4-0 against Canada, 2-1 against Bangladesh], we were up there. We wanted to go out there and prove a point,” Harmeet said in the most disdain of fashions.
So, where did it all change for Stuart Law-coached USA side?
“At first, our team chat was something like ‘We have nothing to lose,’ but slowly, once we started, once we beat Bangladesh, our team chat became that we could beat anyone. The transition happened after the Bangladesh win, and then we defeated Pakistan. We fought with India and South Africa hard. They both were finalists in the World Cup, which is a huge positive for us to take from there. That really makes a difference,” Harmeet added.
In those four years, cricket had changed so much that you would definitely be perplexed. There was only one ground back then - the Central Broward Regional Park Stadium - in Lauderhill. But now there are as many as six grounds, with three of them even hosting top teams at the last edition of the T20 World Cup.
It is no coincidence that the infrastructure has seen a massive facelift after the entry of private investments. Cricket is no longer a stepsister of baseball; if anything, it is now legalised in a manner that most of the Major League Cricket franchises have their fan bases, be it the waving flags of Yellow in Texas or the flaunting blue jerseys at New York.
“A lot of investments, too, are there, all the private investors are doing their bit right now. There is a domestic league, then the USA national cricket championship, and a lot of cricket and new talents are out there. We would like better facilities for the kids but right now, it is what it is. There is a lot of growth, and it is getting there,” an optimistic-sounding Harmeet said.
But cricket's real success isn’t just the private investments or the cricket-loving fans who turn up day in and day out but the conversion of some hardcore American sports maniacs into cricket badgers.
“A lot of Americans did not know about the sport after the World Cup happened, with America doing so well, after the World Cup, there was the Major League also. This year, we got to see a lot of new fans at the venues, even baseball fans watching cricket. A lot of them liked it as well; it is slowly growing, and you have to give it time for any sport to grow,” Harmeet said.
“People need to know the rules, Americans are very passionate about the sport, so they need some time to know about the sport and the rules. We have to invest time to build a fan base,” the USA all-rounder had to add.
Harmeet observed the widespread word of the sport’s success when he had noticed an American family on the sidelines during the USA’s League Two contests with the Netherlands and Canada at The Hague. At that moment, Harmeet was convinced that cricket in the States could mirror the achievements of one certain, Afghanistan.
“It is very overwhelming when people support. You can have bad days but we are a formidable side, who are winning consistently. We are a force to reckon with in associate cricket, we want to go that route and make sure that we start winning a lot of games and tournaments,” he thanked the fans for their endless support.
“You will soon start seeing USA cricket going from strength to strength, but it will not be long before we start dominating it. If the infrastructure and the opportunities align, USA Cricket can be the next Afghanistan. It is just that everybody needs to work towards one goal: claiming the ODI status and gaining the T20 top ten rankings. All of that will make a huge difference,” Harmeet said open-chested.
June 06, 2024, is not just another day in a cricketing fan’s life. If you are on the other side of the border in Asia, it is a black-letter day. But if you are a fan of the underdog story, you perhaps remember that day as being a ‘watershed moment’ in the USA’s cricketing history.
Approximately four hours and 40 overs later, there was nothing that could separate the two sides. The shock factor is more prominent in the Pakistani dressing room than in the USA. Even if the USA had walked back home at this point, the reception would have been raucous. At a moment when thoughts could get cloudy, Harmeet’s street smarts benefitted the USA, converting the ones into twos and twos into threes in the super over.
That was the moment when pressure consumed Pakistan cricket in its entirety. Just a few minutes later, that pent-up pressure blew up like a pressure cooker, and the after-effects of that moment still linger in the minds of the neutrals.
Amidst so much celebration, Harmeet was consumed by his own thoughts. Who was he thinking about at that point?
“Whenever I perform, or anything good happens in life, I always remember her [Harmeet’s mom]. Always grateful, look up to the sky. It humbles me down as well when I do well. I dedicate every good thing to her,” Harmeet said with a tinge of undertone of sadness in his voice.
His mom wasn’t just an emotional support, she was a major driving force behind Harmeet’s continued pursuit of his cricketing career.
“When I started playing the sport [cricket], she [mother] used to take me everywhere. Dad had his own contribution, the sacrifices that he made, you know selling the house for me to pursue cricket. But with Mom, it was an emotional connection. She did everything in her power to make me who I am today,” he said.
“I could see it in her that she wanted me to play cricket at the highest level. Even after the U-19 World Cup [2012], there is an image of the trophy with her behind me. She was equally hardworking and passionate from her side to help me,” the former Mumbai player added.
If you think for a moment, it isn’t even a slight surprise that ‘winning was everything’ for Harmeet, the same kid who built this ethos during his endless hours of physical and mental training at the Maidaans.
“It was [wild], and it meant a lot for the boys. The way we came into the World Cup, it was raining also before it [tournament]. We couldn’t get out a lot, we were practising indoors. Again, before the World Cup, we had a lot of outdoor and indoor sessions,” Harmeet said, talking about the preparations for the World Cup.
“We [the USA] don’t have setups like the top teams but we had the will to fight. The will to not put them on a pedestal, that’s what we decided. We decided not to put them higher than us, if we fall down, we fall down. We were really proud of the brand of cricket that we played, it was important that we pursue that approach in the future as well so that people recognise that this is the brand of cricket that the USA plays and the culture of winning,” he added.
Now that cricket is already here in the USA, the natural progression for the sport is to seep through the grassroots level, making it much more accessible and understandable for the larger portion of the uninitiated American audience. That’s where building a base for every big state hub could come in handy to spread the word.
“America has a very big sports market, it is the hub. Everyone wanted cricket in America; now it is there, and we can’t wait to make it big. It is growing from strength to strength every year, the best of the best come and play. The sky is the limit from there for the Major League [Cricket],” Harmeet said with pride on his face.
“I can’t wait for the day when every team has their home stadium and build a fan base. Athletes are like gods in their home state when you look at other leagues [MLB, NBA and NFL]. I can’t wait for cricket to reach that place, once we are there, the sport has so much to achieve. The start feels so good.”
Seattle is one place where Harmeet had already sown the seeds of a feeder system when the Mumbai-born cricketer moved from India to the USA for the first time in his life. Seattle wasn’t just his first home but a place where the all-rounder has donned multiple hats, from building a ‘winning culture’ and identifying the talent pool to mentoring and coaching some young talents.
“For me, it was all about trying to bring about a change in the culture that we wanted to win championships. The first year, we [Seattle Thunderbolts] didn’t win [Minor League Cricket], I didn’t know the team well. But the next year, I took it upon myself to build the side and get good young players into the setup,”
“From there, we went on to win the Minor League against all odds. We beat the divisional champions and then won the conference championship. That was quite big at that time. Seattle as an overall city, started accepting the sport more after that. If you see all the junior tournaments, now Seattle is winning all of them. Winning is a habit. That’s what we curated over there. Nothing lesser than winning,” he had to add.
However, the USA's biggest problem is not any of the above but a much more severe one that often affects the teams at the lower end of the cricketing strata: continuity.
Ask any team in the associate world, and you will often hear them talking about this. Alongside continuity, these smaller teams also dearly need consistent challenges facing the international behemoths. While it might seem stupid for the bigger teams to face these smaller teams for economic reasons, it otherwise defeats the whole ecosystem of the International Cricket Council (ICC), which is to get cricket to newer countries.
So, how can one maintain an equilibrium between both sides?
“I’m also fairly new to the associate world, to give my big words, but what I feel and saw is that other than League 2, at least the bare minimum, what ICC can do is organise bilateral series with top five teams. That keeps the associate nations in the game also, and an away series to a top-five team, if it is an away series, you can get the crowd also. It is a top team, they will be support for both,” Harmeet said in a bid to convince the ICC.
“It keeps the game in balance and gives the associate nations a chance to beat top teams. When West Indies A went to Nepal, so something like that. It would be great if such tours could happen on a more regular basis in the T20 format. They can sell the broadcasting rights and stuff like that, that’s how the game will progress.”
Harmeet Singh and the United States of America are definitely on the rise, and the only thing stopping them from achieving greater success is the need for consistent displays on the big stage.
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