Wayne capitalizes on growing popularity of cricket, launches youth training camp

Posted by author February 28, 2025 Cricket

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The Wayne Community Center is offering a cricket training camp for 8- to 11-year-old children.
Recreation officials hope to expand the program in the spring by building a permanent cricket pitch at a local park.
Cricket is the second-most popular spectator sport in the world, only behind soccer.

WAYNE — Cricket may feel, to some, like a whole new ballgame, but a local group has emerged with a plan to make it a mainstream sport.

Its target? Youths addicted to fun.

Krishna Shah, for example, cannot get enough. She already does dance lessons and practices the electric guitar. She sometimes plays basketball and soccer, too.

Yet even with a full slate of activities, the 11-year-old township girl could not turn down a chance to try cricket for the first time. Her mother heard about a training camp at the Wayne Community Center and registered her for the program, which runs through March 21.

Krishna is among 15 children in the coed camp, whose organizers hope to extend into next season.

Story continues below photo gallery.

Her father, Amul Shah, drove her to the community center on Pike Drive on a recent Monday night and stood on the sidelines of a basketball court. He watched as she shagged fly balls and took cuts with a plastic bat.

“A lot of enthusiastic parents are trying to make a go of it,” Shah said. “I think that it’s exciting.”

And for a public recreation department, such an offering is rare.

Recreation Director Timothy Roetman said the cricket program for 8- to 11-year-old children is likely the only one of its kind in Passaic County. While there are other options in New Jersey, he said, they are often provided through private academies that charge more in fees.

“We really wanted to be one of the first in the area,” he said.

Roetman consulted with township resident Fenil Patel for guidance on how to start the program around the time that Wayne purchased the community center, which is a former YMCA facility.

Patel and a fellow township resident, Prashant Srivastava, then assembled the perfect pair of coaches.

Lalta Persaud, also the interim general manager of North Jersey Country Club on Hamburg Turnpike, is the president of Indoor Cricket USA, a private academy in the Whippany section of Hanover Township. His son, Ryan Persaud, is a professional cricketer.

“This is how these programs start,” Roetman said. “You have to start with people who are passionate about it.”

The goal of the program is to make it affordable and available to everyone in the township, Patel said. Its cost is $100 or $120, depending on whether a family holds a membership at the community center.

Roetman said the township will develop the program further by building a permanent cricket pitch, the location of which will be decided in the coming weeks. He said it should be ready by late April.

Cricket is largely regarded as the world’s second-most popular spectator sport, only behind soccer.

According to USA Cricket, its official governing body, there are at least 400 local leagues in the country. A professional cricket league debuted with six teams in July 2023, and the sport will be featured at the Olympics for only the second time ever, when Los Angeles hosts the Summer Games in three years.

Persaud said it is becoming more popular due to the advent of quicker formats, including what is known as Twenty20 cricket, which is completed in about the time it takes to play a baseball game. Traditional matches can take up to five days.

“The American public is used to fast-paced action,” he said.

There is also greater exposure to cricket, Persaud said, as streaming services, like ESPN+, broadcast live games from around the world. He said emigration from the sport’s heartland of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, has also contributed to its growth here.

Khalil Bechara, a township resident, was introduced to cricket when he traveled to India for his job as an IT manager. He said he enjoyed the sport so much that he started to watch it at home, eventually getting his sons, Carlos, 9, and Miguel, 6, hooked on it. Now they are enrolled in the training camp.

The younger boy even checked out books about cricket from his school library. “They’ve been welcomed here, tremendously, and they’re learning a lot,” Bechara said.

Krishna, the 11-year-old girl, said she watches cricket on TV with her grandparents — in between her many other leisure pursuits.

“It’s really fun,” she said of her latest diversion. “My favorite part is fielding — catching the ball and throwing it back. I just think that it’s really fun.”

Philip DeVencentis is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news in your community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: devencentis@northjersey.com