My Mother attends a Professional Cricket Match in Los Angeles
- Abhimanyu Rajp
My mother was a teacher by profession. Needless to say, my childhood was disciplined, structured, and full of strict love. Education was, and still is, of the utmost importance in our family. With a master’s degree in English, my mother is very much a by-the-book person.
So imagine trying to explain American cricket to her, an immigrant who uprooted her life at 50 and moved across the world with my father and their three children. The point is, cricket has not exactly been at the forefront of our family life since then.
I have been fortunate to see the game from several different perspectives. I represented the USA National Team for more than a decade at various levels and saw the youth-to-senior pathway play out through my own career. Today, as I lead Los Angeles Cricket’s nonprofit efforts, I am also the majority stakeholder in a Minor League Cricket franchise and spend much of my time trying to grow the game away from the field. Many claim they are building cricket in America. Sometimes, it is difficult to know who actually is. So here I am, like many others, doing my part.
Over the past few years, as Major League Cricket and the Knight Riders prepared to enter the Los Angeles market, there have been more questions. Rumors, speculation, skepticism. You name it. Add to that the governance issues surrounding USA Cricket and ACE, and it is easy to see why a shadow has hung over so much of the good work being done, whether by the professional game, commercial entities, community organizations, local leagues, academies, or nonprofits trying to grow the sport, each working within its own silo.
As I move past 40, my weeks look very different from what they once did when I played actively. My mother no longer sees me packing my cricket kit on weekdays for practice or on Friday evenings for the weekend ahead. At my peak, I played more than 75 top-level matches in a year. Last year, in 2025, I played four.
These days, the cricket kit stays home.
Administration, community work, meetings, fundraising, partnerships, planning, and phone calls have become my game. Ironically, I now spend far more time working for cricket than I ever did actually playing it.
Which brings us back to my mother, because all of this puzzles her more than I can imagine.
“Tu kar ki rehe hain?” she sometimes asks me. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” is my usual reply.
I have never had a simple answer. There has never really been an answer, an exclamation point, a clear roadmap, or any infrastructure to point toward. Trying to explain what many individuals like me are building on the domestic front has always meant describing a present alongside a future that can seem far-fetched, much like inhabited colonies on Mars. So I stay quiet.
In 2023, Shah Rukh Khan announced that the Knight Riders Group was joining Major League Cricket, which launched that year, and bringing a franchise to Los Angeles.
My mother heard the news.
“Shah Rukh ne team lai layi hai.” Shah Rukh has bought a cricket team in America.
She knew I co-owned “some cricket team,” although I am not entirely convinced she knew what that actually meant.
Then came the question only a Punjabi mother could ask.
“Ehnu ki milega?” What is he going to get out of this?
I smiled.
“Pata nahi. Dekhde haan.” I don’t know. Let’s see.
As an investor in the American cricket ecosystem, I was fortunate enough to meet Venky Mysore during Major League Cricket’s inaugural season in Dallas that year. He graciously gave me a few minutes of his time. Looking around at what had been built in Grand Prairie, it was obvious that his vision for Los Angeles had already begun taking shape.
Yet, outside the cricket community, very few people were talking about it, much like today. The headlines came and went. The bigger vision of establishing cricket within the American sporting landscape quietly continued.
The following year, in 2024, while visiting India, I was fortunate to be granted an audience with Venky Sir. During that visit, I received an invitation to attend the Kolkata Knight Riders’ opening home match at the iconic Eden Gardens during the IPL.
Watching an IPL match as a former player, a critic, and an organizer teaches you things no spreadsheet ever can. You begin to appreciate the countless moving parts that come together to create an experience. The presentation. The entertainment. The fan engagement. The operations. The attention to detail. It was an education I did not know I needed.
How would all of this translate to Los Angeles?
After the match, there was a celebration with the team, stakeholders, investors, and partners. Venky Sir invited me to join. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. At the event, while I was chatting with a few familiar faces, he looked over and said, “Come with me.”
A few steps later, there stood Shah Rukh Khan.
We exchanged very few words, took a photograph, and before I knew it, the moment was over.
Naturally, after the event, I sent the picture to the two most important women in my life.
My wife’s phone practically exploded.
My mother’s response? A confused question.
“Tu ki kar reha hain ehde naal?” What are you doing with him?
She could not understand why her son was standing next to the Shah Rukh Khan. I told her it was all related to cricket and that, one day, it might make sense. I was simply fortunate enough to meet him.
Cricket was never exactly dinner-table conversation in our home. I pursued this passion alongside everything else that was required of me, both as a member of my family and by myself. Now, as an investor in this ecosystem, it is often difficult to make sense of it all when it comes to the time, effort and dollars spent on the game. My mother would see me leave for meetings instead of matches, spend hours behind a computer instead of in the nets, and disappear to a cricket ground not to play, but to organize, curate, and build.
She does not really see me manage a Minor League franchise, work with community organizations, or invest countless hours, funds, and resources into the game. I am away from home for cricket just as much as I used to be, perhaps even more, only this time I am not playing nearly as much. Yet we never really talked about what it was all for.
Like any mother, she quietly wondered, “Ehda sab da tenu ki fayida?” What is all of this going to get you? I never had anything tangible to point to that would suffice as an answer. The branding, commercialization, and future expansion of the cricket ecosystem that some of us envision would not make sense to her just yet.
Then came this past week.
And answering those questions became a little easier.
You see, I took my mother to a Major League Cricket match in Los Angeles.
A professional cricket match in Los Angeles, played at a newly constructed venue built by the Los Angeles Knight Riders. A first of its kind, a cricket stadium owned and developed by a franchise, standing right here in our city.
This, I had to show her.
There were other crazy people like me, but at a whole new level.
The Knight Riders were kind enough to provide us with a few hospitality tickets, and I placed her chair in the front row, where she could take in the entire ground and feel what it meant to be part of a cricket crowd at a professional game being played at a proper venue. She is hardly a fanatic of the sport. To her, cricket is simply the game her son plays.
Throughout the evening, she asked me question after question.
Only this time, I had a few answers.
Because she was not imagining anyone’s dream anymore. She was sitting inside it. At the Knight Riders Cricket Ground, set within the historic Fairplex in Pomona and destined to become a future Olympic venue, I shared with her what little I knew about the work, partnerships, and belief that had brought us to this moment. Sitting there, like her, anyone could understand just how much had already been done to make this possible, while also realizing how much work remained to build the future that so many had always believed would one day arrive.
My mother could see it all unfolding in front of her. The vendors. The infrastructure. The families, crews, fans, volunteers, sponsors, and television cameras. Children were watching their heroes, waving flags, and screaming, all at a venue built in less than 100 days and located only an hour from her home.
For the first time, I could point and say, “This is why.”
Did I have anything to do with building the ground? No. But when an organization like the Knight Riders Group builds a $21 million facility in your backyard, things change.
So did my mother’s questions.
How do the players get paid? Who pays them? Do you also pay your players? Can this be sustained? How does it become profitable? What happens next?
“I don’t know,” I answered.
As always.
But those were very different questions.
Then she looked toward the field and asked, “Tu ehna ch kissey naal khedeyan hain?” Have you ever played with any of these players?
I smiled.
“Naal te nahi… par ehna ch kaiyaan de watt kadey hain.” Not with them, but I have given a few of them a run for their money.
I pointed toward a few familiar faces.
“We played in the 2006 Under-19 World Cup, the first time the USA qualified.”
Sunil Narine. Kieron Pollard. Still going strong.
Then I pointed toward Colin Munro.
“One of my victims,” I joked.
Then there were familiar faces closer to home. Ali Khan, Jessy Singh, Nitish Kumar, and Ayan Desai, to name a few. Fellow USA internationals with whom I have had the privilege of sharing the field over the years.
Maybe she did not understand every detail I explained to her that night, but I know that she now understood something important: Cricket is becoming an increasingly commercial enterprise, with brands reaching across industries, cultures, and worlds.
By the end of the night, it felt fitting that it was the Fourth of July.
My family and I had just watched a thrilling game of professional cricket. As the final run was scored, the sky above the cricket ground lit up with fireworks celebrating America’s 250th Independence Day. As a nation, we celebrate the freedoms that allow people from every corner of the world to bring their cultures, traditions, passions, and dreams.
On this Fourth of July, one of those dreams happened to be played with a bat and a ball. What had once been only an idea was now standing right in front of us.
That is what the Los Angeles Knight Riders, Major League Cricket, the International Cricket Council, and my new favorite friends at Fairplex have given to all of us who have spent years, and in some cases decades, trying to grow this game.
Answers.
This is just the beginning. I have no clue where this leads, but all signs point upward.
It was my mother’s first professional cricket match, and all I could think about was how much I wished he were still with us.
My father would have loved it.
Thank you to the MLC Media Team and the Los Angeles Knight Riders for the access and hospitality.
