Masaood Yunus is the president of the Minnesota Cricket Association, the Twin Cities-area cricket league. The Abu Dhabi native began playing in the local league in 2001, then got involved in administration in 2005. Since then, he’s been league webmaster, assistant vice president, vice president, and now president – a pretty typical path for someone in any volunteer-run organization.

The league’s teams play Saturday or Sunday matches pretty much every week all summer, at five parks around the Minneapolis area – and we’re not talking beer-league softball kind of games, either. Think of the MCA as the same as town-team baseball, except entirely concentrated in the Twin Cities, and based less on geography and more around the two dozen clubs that make up the league’s members.

I had a chance to talk with Yunus – who came across as remarkably passionate about growing the game in America – about the MCA, and about the future of cricket in Minnesota and in America. In part one of three of the interview, we discuss how to develop the game of cricket in America:

Q: As far as developing the game of cricket in America, do you think it’s going to be important to get people like me – mainstream American sports fans, white guys, etc. – playing the game?

A: Being blunt, the sport can only go forwards if mainstream Americans are involved, are engaged, are playing active roles, not just in the field but also in the administration of the sports organizations that run all of these tournaments. I’m a firm believer in that. We are running it today, but I really think that we need to have more American involvement or engagement to this. If Americans are not adopting it, it will stay as a second-level sport which will likely not get much traction at the highest levels.

… I can live in that bubble where I think, “Hey, I’ve got 600 people in my league today, and we’re doing really great,” but the truth is that 90 percent or 95 percent of those people are migrants. We need a good balance of migrants and local players.

Q: How do you propose getting more Americans interested in cricket?

**A: From what I have seen, and I might be wrong too, number one the sport has to be a duration of three to four hours; that generally appeals to an American sports fan.   I think at a bare minimum, Twenty20 games are the only way forward for people to adopt the game, learn the game, and move along with it. [Editor’s note**: here’s Wikipedia explaining what Twenty20 is.] That’s one piece of it, from the sports perspective of how do you want to introduce the game to anyone, not just mainstream Americans but also to other ethnic groups as well.

The second item is, I think is forging partnerships with park boards, athletic complexes, and schools is absolutely important and a good start.  You can try to pull parents into a field, but if their kids are not interested in sports, they will be disinterested. I have two kids, and if I go out looking for schools, cricket as a sport isn’t on offer.

I live in the city of Eden Prairie. I walked in to the city office one day and inquired about offering cricket as a sport during the summer. The first look I got was, “What is cricket?” And the second answer is, ‘Well, we haven’t really seen much demand for cricket, so we don’t even know if someone would be interested in it.’ And it puzzles me a little bit, because many of these cities have a huge Southeast Asian population, a Caribbean population, or other people from cricket-playing nations.The cities are not realizing that, by keeping them engaged into the sport that they play and love, is very important for the cities to keep them as good residents as well.

I keep hearing about development models like lacrosse, or soccer to be used as a benchmark for introducing cricket across America… but my point to that is, you cannot just pick up lacrosse and soccer and just run with it, and say that model was successful, let’s run with it. One of the biggest advantages of lacrosse and soccer was that Americans started to play. And then Americans started to get into the administration. I think it’s really important to understand the process, the mindset, of how the sports spread into a particular region, like America for example. The native people are the ones who will be in a better position to spread it and take it forward.

… We haven’t done a good job at being inviting to mainstream Americans. I’ve seen people come in and show interest. But I don’t know, whether they don’t feel they fit in, or some other sports take them away- but I don’t see them stick around. So that’s definitely a challenge and I’m trying to work around, and see how we can be more inviting. We have some programs in place this year, that we are trying to work and see if we can invite like neighborhoods and get them involved.

Q: Let’s say, hypothetically, you had the power to move cricket in America any direction, and the money to make it happen. What would be the first thing you’d want to do?

**A: If I’m in that situation, and I have to move things around in America, and move the game into something more productive, I would be going all across the country and forging partnerships with the cities. Building up facilities – absolutely important. And especially engagement at the school level – I’m going to [use] a quote from United States Youth Cricket Association: “You cannot undermine the power of schools.” That’s really where your future cricket generation will come from. If you’re not teaching the kids, from the age of five to sixteen, this sport will remain where it has been for decades. Even though the history of cricket is more than a century old in America itself, mainstream Americans don’t really know about it.

Another driving factor is finances. You need to get some really big donors and sponsors, and invest in the facilities, and utilize the facilities.  I will give you an example. There’s a stadium out there, a cricket ground in Fort Lauderdale. It’s a beautiful stadium, probably one of the premium facilities here in America. The Sri Lanka and New Zealand teams came in last year and played out there. Even though there is visibility around that for a new stadium,  it hasn’t really materialized into inviting more international teams for the past few years.  Just by building facilities and leaving them out there, it’s not going to help. Building facilities, introducing games to the youth, at the school level, at the college level, and giving them perks to come in and play cricket, that will make a huge difference.

**Later, in part two of the interview, we speak about the Minnesota Cricket Association in 2012 – and in part three, we discuss the national organization in charge of USA Cricket. **