Speaking with Coach Sham Chotoo, Commissioner of Bowie Boys and Girls Sports Program

Today, join me as I sit down with Coach Sham Chotoo, commissioner of Bowie Boys and Girls cricket club and chairman of Maryland Cricket Association, to discuss his cricketing journey starting from the Caribbean to Maryland in USA.  Along with growing the cricket sports program in and around the Washington D.C. area, Coach Sham has bolstered cricket to center stage for many schools and young athletes in the United States. 

Join us as we discuss the path that has been paved so young cricketers today can now aspire to play at higher national levels.

Host: Ashwath Gurumurthy
betweenthewicketsfm.com

Transcript

 You're listening to Between the Wickets.

Ashwath: I have the pleasure of speaking with Coach Sham today, who is the Cricket Commissioner of Bowie Boys and Girls Sports Program, and also the Chairman of Maryland Cricket Association. He holds other office posts for DC Hub Area and with USA Cricket. 

It's truly an honor to speak with you today, Coach Sham.This is just my second episode, and I'm so grateful that you are here today. I'm looking forward to learn about your journey and contributions in getting cricket to mainstream sports in the United States.

Personally, I've been playing cricket since a very young age here in the U. S. and I see that this sport has been slowly gaining popularity here, especially with the World Cup this year and the LA Olympics that will be hosted in 2028.

I know you have done a lot of work to bring cricket to the center stage and have worked with schools and youngsters in this country. I would love to learn about your journey and your efforts.

Coach Sham: It's a pleasure for me to be here on this podcast.

Ashwath: Just to start off, it would be great for you to talk to me a little bit about your cricketing journey and how you were introduced to the sport.

Coach Sham: I always enjoy talking about cricket. I am the cricket commissioner for the Bowie Boys and Girls Club. I started a cricket program with the Bowie Boys and Girls Club in 2012.  As far as my journey for cricket, I am from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. I started playing cricket with my cousins and uncles when I was growing up in Trinidad.

We used to play cricket on the street with, with tennis ball, tennis ball bats. And, um, it, you know, I had enough cousins. For us to form two teams and we'll just play against each other growing up. It was a fun time for me with my cousins and uncles and I really started getting serious about cricket when I went to queen's royal college in trinidad That was a middle school and high school combined together And it's a part of the british education system and it's called a college So it's not it's not a university or it's it's a high school and middle school combined together There I met some great friends.

First time I had some, you know, formal training, but the training was nowhere near what we have today in the U. S. with the different cricket academies and the level of coaching we have today. And that's where I really learned the game at Queens Royal College. And then when I came to the U S I continued playing cricket with a team here in the Washington DC area.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there was adult cricket happening here in the Washington DC area. So I played for a team called Dauntless Cricket Club. In  1990s, when I first started, I was going to Howard University. I did my undergrad there at Howard University. And then I found some Caribbean friends who were also on a cricket team, and they asked me to join, and that was Dauntless Cricket Club.

Then I moved to another cricket club called Metro Cricket Club, and I've been there ever since.  So that's my cricketing journey here and that the Washington Cricket League has been around for almost 50 years in the D. C. area.

Ashwath: Yeah, it's sort of surprising when you really think about it in the United States.When you look from the outside, you don't see that much cricket, especially like 20 years ago, 30 years ago. But there were still communities here getting along playing cricket to express what they miss from their home countries and all that. So I think that's really cool.

Coach Sham: Yeah, that was a main thing, you know, it was the main way that people from different countries would get together and socialize. Because when the Washington Cricket League first started, there was a lot of, um, players from Caribbean teams. There were Caribbean teams. And when the teams would get together, one team will cook a lot of food, and both teams will, you know, eat together after the game.And it was, it was more of a bonding with  your fellow countrymen. And that's how it really started.

Ashwath:  So I know you just talked about how when you first came, how the teams were here, what sort of adult leagues there were.

What were the academies like? Were there any academies at all? Did anyone you know that wasn't bringing cricket from their home country? Was anyone else playing cricket? Did anyone know about the sport? Did anyone really care to watch it? What was that sort of landscape like?

Coach Sham:  Right. Back then, you know, when I first came to the US in, in, in 1989, I came into the US in 1989 and the Washington DC area, but I started playing cricket in 1990.That's when I found my team.

You know, back then there was no youth cricket, none at all, right? So all these were just adults playing cricket in the adult league. There was absolutely no youth cricket, no academies. Back then, you know, the majority of the people who played Cricket Asset was from the Caribbean.You had a few, one or two teams from India and Pakistan, and then there was a couple of teams with people from England and Australia and South Africa, one or two, those teams. Right?

But since we had the massive migration of people from India and Pakistan and Sri Lanka for the high tech jobs in the U.S., that really changed the the landscape of cricket here. Because you'd have all these foreign nationals coming in here working, they wanted to play their sport. So, and they all are very passionate about cricket. The leagues just started getting larger and larger and more and more teams were being formed because they just love playing cricket. Right.

As these migrants came in—these professional workers came in and they had, they had kids and the kids, they brought kids with them and the kids wanted to play cricket too, right?

They say, "Hey, well, let's, let's start some youth progra.,"  But there wasn't anything to talk about, right? In the Washington DC area, coach Milroy Dunn, he was interested in coaching. Currently he's the owner of Future Stars Cricket Club. He started coaching kids. They'll meet at an indoor facility, at a baseball facility, and he would coach them cricket and sometimes he would take them up to New Jersey to play against teams there.

Sometimes he would take them to North Carolina and try to play against teams there. But there was nothing formal and nothing structured for youth cricket back then. So youth cricket really started here around, probably around  2010. Yeah, 2010 is when cricket, youth cricket really started slowly happening there.

And that's when the Maryland Youth Cricket Association started.

Ashwath: So you talked about how Coach Milroy and all, and there was no formal academy or anything. You had to organize kids in your own. It was all about like yourself and how you had to do it. There was no one supporting or anything. I just wanted to bridge a little into how you first introduced cricket into schools, but before that, what was your mindset throughout these like last 10, 15 years you were in the United States with there's no academies, there's no anything.

What was your mindset going into the Bowie school system and what did you want to do with cricket and what was your motivation behind it? 

Coach Sham: While I was playing cricket, it never occurred to me to start any youth program. Right. But, um, when I had kids, they would play sports with the Buoy Boys and Girls Club.

My oldest son, he played soccer, baseball and basketball. Then my daughter, she did volleyball and ice skating and cheerleading. And my youngest son, he did soccer. So I am watching. kids, we're taking them to soccer matches, taking them to basketball matches and volleyball matches. And I said, well, why don't I start cricket here in Bowie?

That gave me the impetus to make a move with cricket because I would attend these meetings at the Bowie Boys and Girls Club because, you know, my kids played there. And I said, Hey, I'm interested in, in starting cricket. So, but I didn't quite know how to go about doing it. Right. I didn't know what kind of equipment to use, where to play, uh, anything like that, right?

A few years later, a guy called Jamie Harrison, he was the founder of Maryland Youth Cricket Association. So he founded Maryland Youth Cricket Association in 2010. And he is an American guy who was a teacher at that time and he, you know, took a class to a field trip. And he got interested in cricket and, well, his, his, the students got interested in cricket because they saw some cricket bat at a historic site and they all were intrigued by it.

So, he was the one who was distributing cricket sets to schools around the country, and then he approached the Bowie Boys and Girls Club and said, hey, why don't you guys start a cricket program here in Bowie? When the board of directors heard that pitch from him, they said, well, we know the right guy to manage this program here in Bowie.

So then they asked me to do it. 2012, we had our first program. In Bowie, parents were already used to taking their kids to sporting events, right? There were typically, there would be practices during the week and then there would be matches on weekends. So there was a lot of, the infrastructure was there for getting kids into sport and the boobie boys and girls club had all these sports.

So cricket was just another sport that parents could select. So during the summertime, there wasn't much activity going on back then. Right? So most of the sports will fall and spring sports and winter sports, but there was no, um, summer sports. The most family go on vacation during that time. So when I first had my cricket program in 2012, I did it with the Bowie Boys and Girls Club and it was a summer program.

We had the practices done on tennis courts at a middle school and we used plastic wickets and plastic bats and plastic balls that we got from the Maryland Youth Cricket Association. Those were donated to us. You know, it was lots of fun. Everybody had lots of fun playing cricket. And I would, I asked all these American parents," Hey, why did you choose cricket?"

And they said to me that they were tired of baseball and basketball and football. They wanted something different for their kids to do. Right. And some of the kids, when they did try it out, they say—Hey, some of them got intimidated by other sports. They say, "But hey, nobody knows about cricket. So let's give cricket a try."
Right. So that's how we started with the Bowie Boys and Girls Club.

So we did that in 2012, 52 kids sign up. We had two different age groups and we were playing on a tennis court. Then the next year we had the same program in the summertime and we had a hundred kids sign up. And all these, the kids are mainly American kids.Um, very few Indian, um, or Bangladeshi kids. There were a couple, maybe a couple of Less than 10, less than 10 were, um, from the Indian subcontinent area. Right. And we had a few from the Caribbean as well.

Ashwath:  So that growth from like 50 to a hundred, how did you start to spread awareness after that first year?

And how did more people get into joining, especially like Americans, not just, you know, people who you would expect like Indians or people from the Caribbean. How did you spread awareness about the sport in that way?

Coach Sham:  So that was the catalyst that that summer program was the catalyst to move things forward.Because in that program, we had a principal for Kenilworth Elementary School. He participated, his son participated in the program, right? His son really enjoyed playing cricket. His son really didn't play many other sports. His son enjoyed playing cricket. And coming to the end of the program, we had a parents versus kids match. So we got the parents involved in cricket as well, right? And all these American parents and moms and dads who didn't know anything about cricket before starting. So they played the game and they had a lot of fun. And then, you know, the principal said, "Hey, I would love for you to come and introduce this sport to the kids in my school."

I did, I did that. And then, you know, another parent who was part of the Bowie Boys and Girls Club. Her daughter played, she did cheerleading and did some other sport. So she was another principal at Yorktown Elementary School. So I sent out that email to all the parents in the Bowie Boys and Girls Club.

And she said, "Hey, I would love for you to come to my school and introduce cricket." And then a couple of other parents, their kids went to a private school. So they said, "Hey, we would love for you to come."

So that's how it went to the schools, right? So I got. interest from parents wanting cricket to happen at their school.

So those who want to cricket already, they made the contact, they contacted the schools or if they were principal already, they would speak to their PE teachers. And, and, um, and then I said, "Well, why don't I do the same thing with the other schools in Bowie?"

So I sent out emails to principals and PE teachers, and some of them said, "Yes.
Please come, come and let's do the cricket demonstration." And some of them didn't respond. Some of them said, no, their schedule is busy right now. But that first year, so I went to about eight different elementary schools in Bowie. I taught more than a thousand kids how to play cricket. And for that first year, we had eight different teams. And there was  122 kids playing cricket that first year in 2014 is when we started the first elementary school cricket league in the country.

Ashwath: Yeah, I think it's so amazing how you were able to foster that growth and like adding, bringing about like a new community in a place where cricket isn't really that popular.

Right. And like in my experience in schools where I live in New Jersey and stuff, when I have to go play a 4-day tournament, let's say in Houston or go to Maryland or Virginia, Yeah. I'll have to, you know, tell my school that I'm not going to be here. It won't be an excused absence because they say it won't be recognized.

So I think one of the main points I wanted to bring was the way you were able to introduce cricket there. What's your advice for kids like me, or for anyone in other states wanting to continue to promote cricket as a sport?  What's your advice on how we can get that into schools and work together with schools to really get players involved?

Coach Sham: First thing you have, you should start with the schools that you go to, right? If any parent or player wants to start cricket, My recommendation would be to start with the elementary school kids, because the elementary school kids, most of them have not selected a sport yet, right?

Ashwath: Yeah.

Coach Shram: And they're eager to learn.They're eager to learn a new sport. But when you get to middle school, most of those kids who play sports, they have already selected a sport and they will, you know, be serious about that sport and they will be less interested in starting cricket. But high school, you know, I've been to a few high schools.

I did cricket demos at high schools, but all the, um, athletes, they've already selected, well, they're already on the soccer team, the baseball team, the basketball team, and the, you know, the football team. So they, they would play just for fun during the demo. But after that, you know, they wouldn't, they wouldn't really want to do it seriously.

Ashwath: Yeah, I think that's a really good point because in elementary school many kids play multiple sports, a lot of soccer, football, baseball going on, so it's easier to introduce a new sport to them. 

You talked a little bit about how middle school, high school, it's harder to introduce, but when the kids have already started playing cricket, is there any option for colleges to start introducing cricket as another sport, another option?

Baseball, you have Division 1, Division 2, just like in basketball. Is there anything you see happening with cricket in colleges? 

Coach Sham: For colleges to offer cricket as a sport, as a NCAA sport, right? That way they can give, you know, scholarships for cricket. There must be, there's a requirement that you must have men's and women's team.

Right. So if you go to any college in the U. S. right now, chances are you would see there would be a cricket club that's existing at the college. So most of the time it's an informal cricket club or it could be an official club through the college or university with the students playing cricket. You can find that probably at nearly every single university.

But if you look at the composition of those teams, you will see that it's primarily male. So, if there was no restriction for male and female then, you know, I'm sure we could get cricket started. But for colleges to offer cricket as a NCAA sport, there must be men's and women's teams. So that's a problem we're facing right now because there aren't that many  women cricketers in the USA.

Ashwath: Yeah.

Coach Sham: I think if we were to count the number of women cricketers, you would find, or any female from any age playing cricket, you will find probably less than 500.

Ashwath:  Yeah.

Coach Sham:  But male cricketers in the USA at colleges, you probably find about 5, 000.

Ashwath:  Yeah.

Coach Sham:  So that's the issue with colleges.

Ashwath: Okay, yeah, so just getting more females and males also involved so we can eventually get to that NCAA level?

Coach Sham:  Correct. But that's what I've been spending a lot of my time on, women's cricket here in the Washington, D. C. area. And we have the most female cricketers in the country. So we have more than a hundred girls. playing cricket in the Washington DC area. You know, a hundred is not a lot, but it's way more than other regions, right? So we really need to bump that number up much higher. We need to get thousands and thousands of girls playing cricket...

Ashwath: Yeah.

Coach Sham: ...for us to get that, um, in colleges.

Ashwath: I just want to pivot a little towards infrastructure and actual conditions of playing the sport. 

Coach Sham: Okay.

Ashwath: I've been to the DMV multiple times to play tournaments, Maryland, Virginia. I've been to Bowie and all that.

Coach Sham: Uh huh.

Ashwath: And a lot of the grounds I've seen are like very nicely cut, nicely managed. There's many grounds where there's like two or three at the same place. Right. And it's easier to manage, easier to travel for tournaments and all that. But when you go to other states, you see that there's lack in support in cutting the grass.

Coach Sham: Mm hmm.

Ashwath: Getting permits for the grounds, permanent permits, not just every Saturday, Oh, we can play there, but the rest of the week, we can't.

Coach Sham: Yeah.

Ashwath: So, What's your advice to other states about getting to the sort of level that the DMV has in managing grounds and managing tournaments like that? 

Coach Sham:  Well, I mean, the key thing is you have to have, you know, the cricketing community be involved at the different levels.

At the, you know, at the school level, at the county level, at the parks and recreation level. You have to have a well organized group, right? Because In most of these regions throughout the USA, there's a permanent process where you have to apply for fields and, and if there are no fields, you have to talk with the, the local parks and recreation organization to build a field.

But, you know, they would not build a field for you until you can prove that you have enough players, right, to, um, to play cricket, right? But, you know, what we typically do in Maryland is that, you know, we tried to find areas that are not used by any other sport. And then we request the school system or the parks and rec system to build a field there for us.

And sometimes they may say, "Hey, you know, we don't have money to, we don't have money to build that pitch there for you guys." But then we said, "Well, hey, we can raise the money if you just give us permission to build a field there, build a cricket pitch. We will take care of everything." Right.

So what I do in Bowie here is I will, you know, I made some arrangements with the school system, you know, so I got a lot of positive response from the schools here in PG County in Bowie, Maryland, because you started the school, you get the support from the PE teachers, the principals and the entire community.

When you put your request to the school system, they say, "Hey, yeah, we are playing cricket." And so that's where you get the support. But you have to get that grassroot level of support from the community first, right?

So even if you have, you know, a large community of South Asian families, you know, You just have to form a group and, you know, make your request and you have to prove to them that you have enough interest because you're not going to spend time and money to provide a field for you if there are too few cricketers, right?

But you have to make sure that they are aware of the numbers. And that's what we've been doing here in the Washington, D. C. area. You know, you have a lot of the Maryland Youth Cricket Association, the Washington Youth Cricket League, and then there's also the adult leagues, the hard tennis ball leagues.

They play cricket in the adult leather ball leagues, like the Washington Cricket League and the WNCB and the ANCL. So all these, this has a large cricketing population here that has been here for a long time, and they've worked together to get these fields cut and well maintained too, so.

Ashwath: Yeah, I think community is a key aspect in trying to build Cricket.

Coach Sham: Right.

Ashwath: Because at the end of the day, boards are just going to look at the number of names on a piece of paper, nothing else.

Coach Sham: That's correct, that's very correct, yes.

Ashwath: Yeah, I think. Building up the community is one of like the key foundation parts when you're trying to improve cricket.

Coach Sham: Correct.

Ashwath: So as we pivot towards the end of our conversation, I just wanted to get your take on with Major League coming to the U.S. now. We have the cricket in the LA Olympics in 2028. We have the Cricket World Cup here like a month ago. 

Coach Sham: Mhmm.

Ashwath: What's your take on cricket right now in the U. S., and how do you think it's going to evolve over the next couple years and into the future? 

Coach Sham: Having the World Cup recently played here in the U. S., and having cricket being an Olympic sport, that is definitely generating interest. And Major League Cricket starting last year and continuing this year, that is generating interest by the mainstream American kids, right? So.

Because I was at a meeting at my job and, and all these American people, they're not South Asian people, you know, they came up to me and say, "Hey, you guys heard that USA beat Pakistan, right?"

They knew nothing about cricket, nothing about cricket at all. And I say, "Okay well they're hearing about it." And I spoke to a couple of academies and they're saying that, "Hey, you know, because it is World Cup, we're getting some new kids coming to play cricket. They're signing up in the local academies here."

So I think this stuff is very positive for us because now when I go to do a cricket demo at a school, I can tell them, "Hey, you know what? You can play cricket one day for your, for your country in the Olympics." Right. And, and the eyes all light up, right? So now you have something to base it on. Right. And that would just encourage more and more kids to play cricket because the more they "see it on TV, the more they hear about it, that's what will get kids playing cricket. That's what will get parents as well, right? Because a lot of times when I do the cricket demo and at the schools, all the kids really, really enjoy learning about cricket. But when we send out a flyer for them to take to their parents and for the child to sit, tell his mom or dad to sign me up for cricket, when the parents say, Hey, what is cricket?" And they will just toss the flyers. 

You know, so we really need to get the parents more aware of cricket, and that will only happen when once they see it more and more on TV and more and more in schools. But you know, it's a long process to make cricket popular in the U. S.

So I think we really need to get the mainstream American kids playing cricket because you need that diversity of talent to make cricket big.

Because America is full of ethnic diversity, and that's what we need to have in the cricket program for it to be successful. And I know it's a long term goal for the ICC to have cricket just as popular as soccer. And having those three things, Major League Cricket, and the World Cup, and cricket in the Olympics, is a very positive start, and that will definitely bring more awareness to the game, and that will definitely cause the game to get more and more popular here.

Ashwath: Yeah, and I think like you said, the pathway is really important for parents and kids to see what their future can be in cricket. And I think that's one of the key things that will get kids more involved is to see that there is a future in cricket in the United States, not just in other countries around the world.

Coach Sham: Correct. So the USA cricket is doing a lot of good work to set the pathway. They can see that if they start playing cricket now, you know, and they get better and better and better, they can move up and up and up and eventually play for their country or play for one of the major league teams in the US, you know.

Everything is, is slowly getting bigger and bigger, but you can definitely see the progress and you can definitely see that we're headed in the right direction because over the past two or three years, the kids are definitely taking cricket more and more serious. You know, kids are going to the gym and working out and really improving their fitness so they can perform at the top level when they go to play these matches.

That was not happening a few years ago, right? I mean, we have accomplished a lot in the past 12 years, right? With youth cricket here in Maryland. And, you know, but the main, the key thing is you have that cooperation from all the teams. We're all headed, you know, we're working together to move cricket forward.

I mean, when we have a lot of, you know, hardworking volunteers. who work together and really talented top class coaches and facilities that's coming up because of the growth of cricket. And that's why we have, in the Washington D. C. area, we have the largest number of youth cricketers in the country, right, because of the cooperation.

And it's not difficult, I mean, once you have that passion for the game, you can grow cricket anywhere in this country.

Ashwath: Yeah.

And just to finish up, my last question is, do you have any advice to cricketers like myself or anyone else that really wants to make a name of themselves in cricket or wants to play cricket seriously as a professional sport? Do you have any advice?

Coach Sham: You know, the main thing is to keep working hard, keep improving your skill level. Each player always has some, you know, thing that they're not strong on, you know, work on, work on your weaknesses and just improve your fitness level because you know how long cricket matches are.You have to be physically fit and mentally fit to play this game as well, right?

You know, as kids go on, they'll go through different selection processes and, sometimes they may not make the cut one year, but they should definitely not give up because if you have the passion for the game, you should keep trying, keep trying and keep playing, keep improving what you're weak and get better and better and better. And in the long run, it will pay off. Hard work always pays off. Don't get discouraged by the naysayers and don't get discouraged by, you know, different selectors and selection processes. Just keep doing your best.

You know, it's a, it's an evolving process here in the US. Everything is still developing and you know, nothing is set yet.

So the USA cricket is still learning how to provide the right pathway and at always improving their process. It's a good time to be here because, you know, nothing's now developing, but it's also a bad time to be here because thing hasn't fully developed yet. Right. The process has not been fully developed yet.

It will take some time to get it right. Everyone is headed in the right direction to move forward. So once the players keep working hard—they will be successful.

Ashwath: Thank you so much Coach Sham for your time. And thank you so much for everything you've done for cricket in the USA.

Coach Sham: Thank you, Ashwath. I really enjoyed being on your program.

Ashwath: Thank you.