South Asian cricket is booming in Australia. Why is that trend not yet reflected at representative levels?

On a Monday night in October in Sydney’s west, a social game of tape ball cricket served as a vision for the sport’s new era. The tennis ball was wrapped in electrical tape, as is normal to the variant born in Karachi. The players were largely of Pakistani descent. Families watched, children played along the boundary.

It was an otherwise normal game of the accessible form of cricket that has proven popular across South Asia since its development in Pakistan 60 years ago. What was different was how Cricket Australia looked at it. There was $3,000 in prize money, it was held under lights at Cricket NSW’s showpiece venue Blacktown International Sports Park, and the match – won by the Cheetahs over the Falcons – decided the first winner of the trophy that carries the name of BBL club Sydney Thunder.

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Cricket Australia’s freshly minted Chief of Cricket, James Allsopp, said head office would never have supported such forms of the game in the past, but it now recognises they are key for making the sport more inclusive. “Ten years ago, we almost ignored it and didn’t respect it,” Allsopp said. [People thought] it’s not real cricket and that can sit on the side, and it’s not a part of Australian cricket.”

Now, social cricket, winter leagues and Last Man Stands – an eight-player variant where the final batter left not out can continue – are central to the game’s strategy, eyeing the passion of players with South Asian backgrounds. “I feel like the game has come so far now that any cricket people who play the game we love, we want to embrace it and support it and wrap our arms around it,” Allsopp said.

Junior teams are bursting with Indian, Pakistani, Afghan, Nepali, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan names, and these social, indoor and non-traditional competitions play year round. However Allsopp, who helped prepare the sport’s multicultural action plan last year before taking on his current role role in July, warned there’s still work to do in order to ensure representative sides reflect modern Australia.

Participation in Australian cricket by people with South Asian backgrounds has doubled to 20% in the past five years but among those with state contracts the proportion is just 5%, prompting research into why.

“Our hypothesis is that the South Asian communities are really, really focused on education, and at times that means that they can’t put as much energy into cricket,” he said. “We want to understand that further, if that’s the case, and how we can support that.”

The goal, set out in the multicultural action plan, to increase the share of state players to 8% by 2027 looks almost impossible to reach, and a South Asian talent camp earmarked for this year won’t be rolled out until the research is completed. Yet in junior age groups players from these cultural groups are prominent. The Victorian metro men’s under-19 side this summer includes five players with South Asian backgrounds, and there are six in the women’s. The numbers in the Victorian schoolboys and girls under-12 teams are almost double.

Pakistan-born Australian Test star Usman Khawaja said at last year’s launch of the multicultural action plan “cricket in Australia has been a very white-dominated sport” and revealed he challenged Cricket Australia chief executive Nick Hockley to be more ambitious in the space.

Ahead of a summer which includes the first five-match Test series against India since 1992, Allsopp said there were promising players emerging in under-19s age groups, including two in the men’s program and three in the women’s – Hasrat Gill is the captain – and although the 2027 target may not be achieved he expected there would be an increase.

“Some of it is timing, and I think we’d love to move it faster, but every year there’s only x amount of contracts, and players who have got contracts are playing well so they don’t move,” he said. “We just want to make sure we’re giving all players, and particularly our South Asian talented players, every opportunity to press into those contracted roles when opportunities arise.”

Promising cricketers in junior years have traditionally moved on to play in grade cricket, and Allsopp said this part of the game has been slow to adapt to participation trends.

“I call them roles of influence, so club presidents, the club treasurer, vice president, we’re still really underrepresented,” he said. “Those community roles and club presidents, they’re the roles I think we’ve still got work to.”

Suffan Hassan, a grade cricketer for UNSW in Sydney, said he has seen the club environment change over his decade playing seniors, right down to the menu at barbecues.

“They made it more inclusive in terms of having vegetarian food, halal food as well,” he said. “It’s not only just about trying to get more South Asians involved, I think it’s actually the caucasians, to get them to understand what different cultures are and what is the appropriate thing to do, and how to make it more inclusive.”

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Hassan works as a multicultural engagement specialist for Cricket NSW, and has helped organise social games of tape ball cricket into the Sydney Thunder Tape Ball League, which concluded its first season last month.

“This was my idea, about three or four years ago when I first started at Cricket New South Wales to bring the tape ball league to life,” he said. “A lot of these people just go and casually play at grounds, but giving them access to playing under lights, playing at Blacktown International Sports Park, which is a first class venue.”

The Sydney Thunder are hosting a cricket and culture festival on Sunday at Drummoyne Oval alongside the WBBL clash with the Sydney Sixers, featuring Bhangra dancers, Bollywood dancing classes, henna and face painting and tape ball games.