Born in Mumbai, Harmeet featured in two U-19 World Cups for India, including in the title-winning 2012 side. However, over the next seven years, things didn’t go his way. When the opportunity came knocking to play in the Major League Cricket (domestic tournament in the USA), he took it with both hands. For him, it was a chance to chase his dream of playing at the highest level. Not just Harmeet; behind almost every USA cricketer, there is a similar story. Cricket, by and large, is a minority sport in comparison to Baseball, Football (the American version) and basketball.

Understandably, it is the subcontinental immigrants who are in the majority cricket-playing population in the country. However, when you are chasing a dream in a land that is not familiar to you, it is not easy. Even more so for an associate nation; most of the country is not familiar with the sport. Neither do they have the conditions and facilities are not there to pursue it. The US, despite featuring in the first ever international match 220 years ago (1844) against Canada, have barely played any international cricket against the top teams in the past century.

Once the Imperial Cricket Conference was renamed as International Cricket Council in 1965, USA were inducted as an associate nation. Since 1979, they have featured in qualifying tournaments (did not feature in two editions). They even made it to the Champions Trophy in 2004. Yet, their growth stagnated for various reasons including the fact that cricket was not warming up enough to become a global sport. It was only after the advent of T20, things started to change rapidly. Six years after ICC gave international status to all T20s between nations, the biggest international event in the format — T20 World Cup — is coming to the shores of the United States.

Among the many who have seen the development of the sport in the country over the past six years from close quarters is former Karnataka cricketer and coach, J Arunkumar. After being an experienced coach in the domestic circuit, Arunkumar applied to become the USA head coach in 2020. While the Covid pandemic made things difficult for him and USA cricket, Arunkumar was with the team for over two years before leaving in late 2022. In this period, USA recorded their first-ever T20I win over a full-member nation, beating Ireland in 2021 (they also beat Scotland in the ODI format).

For Arunkumar, the experience was a learning curve where he had to work towards building a cricketing culture. “There’s no USA culture as its own (in cricket). So how to get a cricketing culture, a team culture to win? How everybody could buy into that and then play for the team, although they’re from different races? So, that was a good challenge and we did well,” says Arunkumar.