What's at stake:
The Fresno City Council will consider a plan Thursday to establish cricket pitches at two city parks. If the plan is greenlit, the city would be following a larger trend in the region.
Two city parks west of Highway 99 could get new cricket pitches if city officials approve a construction contract at a Fresno City Council meeting Thursday.
If councilmembers greenlight the plan, a cricket pitch would be constructed in the outfield of a baseball field at Jaswant Singh Khalra Park in west Fresno. The plan would also convert a soccer field into a cricket pitch at the new Regional Sports Complex in southwest Fresno.
City staff have recommended a $165,785 construction contract with Juarez Brothers General Engineering, Inc — funded entirely through Measure P dollars.
A lot has taken place behind the scenes over several years to finally get to this stage, said Deep Singh, the executive director of Jakara Movement — and he said all the credit goes to the local community of cricket players in Fresno.
“For nearly a decade, members of the Punjabi community and larger South Asian communities have been working with city officials to try to find a way to make cricket happen here in Fresno,” Singh told Fresnoland. “There have been a lot of promises along the way, but we seem to finally be at a place where a desire and dream of a number of players here in Fresno is finally coming to fruition.”
Singh added that Fresno is following a larger trend in the region: the City of Clovis has a cricket pitch at Sierra Bicentennial Park and the Central Unified School District has a cricket pitch at Madison Elementary School.
Jaswant Singh Khalra Park’s location in west Fresno — which has a concentration of Punjabi and Sikh residents — makes it a logical place for a cricket pitch.
“West Fresno tends to be the center of South Asian American life in Fresno — everyone lives around that area,” Singh said. “So when they were going to Madison (Elementary) to play, when they went to the City of Clovis, they were driving past that park and having to go far distances.”
Back in 2017, the Fresno City Council voted to rename the west Fresno park after Jaswant Singh Khalra, a prominent Sikh human rights activist who was assassinated in 1995.
The renaming effort was led by then-councilmember Oliver Baines after engagement with the local Punjabi and Sikh community. Councilmember Miguel Arias, who replaced Baines on the City Council, has sustained that community engagement.
Arias told Fresnoland he wanted to thank the Jakara Movement, as well as Singh, for educating city officials about the growing community of cricket players in Fresno.
“It’s going to be an amazing opportunity to recognize the Sikh community,” Arias said, “and their traditional sports and culture in a dedicated space just the way we have for soccer, baseball, softball and basketball across the city.”
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