Zulfi Khan, president of the Central Virginia Cricket Association (Photo by Jay Paul)
In 1995, Zulfi Khan got a call from two strangers. It was the beginning of a journey that would eventually make him president of the Central Virginia Cricket Association.
“There were two guys — they’re still my friends — who were looking for people to play cricket,” Khan recounts. “They opened the phone book and said, ‘There’s a guy named Khan, Khan must be a cricket player.’”
As it turns out, Khan, a Pakistani native, had grown up playing cricket with friends and family. “We played in alleyways and everywhere,” Khan says. “I played with my uncles, with senior school guys.”
Now, 28 years later, the days of hunting through the phone book for cricket recruits are long gone. For nearly a decade, the CVCA has held tournaments featuring dozens of teams twice a year at the Richmond Kickers’ Capital Park near L. Douglas Wilder Middle School in eastern Henrico County. And this fall, a new cricket pitch is slated to open in Beulah Neighborhood Park in Chesterfield County.
“This space has been used by folks to play cricket for the past 10 years,” says Stuart Connock, assistant director of Chesterfield County Planning and Construction Services. “Now, it’s going to be a regulation cricket pitch.”
Photo via Adobe Stock
A regulation cricket playing field is a circle 500 feet in diameter with a clay “pitch” — like a baseball infield — in the circle. The pitch is where bowling — the cricket equivalent of pitching — takes place.
At Beulah Neighborhood Park, the pitch — 22 yards long and 10 feet wide — will be placed between two soccer fields so that the field can be used for other sports, too. The field itself is so large because, unlike in baseball, batters can hit the ball both forwards and backwards.
The field will be graded and irrigated and will have lights for nighttime play. The facility will also include batting cages and a scoreboard. The $2.4 million project is being built by Dickerson Construction LLC, a Chesterfield-based contractor.
Beulah Neighborhood Park, on the former grounds of the old Beulah Elementary School, will also include a playground, a splash pad, walking trails and a 40,000-square-foot recreation center.
“It’s a great location because, as an old school, it was embedded in the community — there are lot of walking opportunities, and it’s easy to get to,” Connock says. “With all the different amenities, this will be a community congregating point. It gives cricket the opportunity for a broader audience.”
The United States is one of the only former British colonies where cricket does not have a major national following. “Worldwide, it’s the second most popular sport behind soccer,” says Chesterfield Director of Parks and Recreation Neil Luther.
Khan says his mother is one of the world’s estimated 2.5 billion cricket fans. “When my mother is visiting, she tries to watch every time Pakistan is playing. Many people say the most important things in life are God, country and family. For a cricket player, it might be God, country, family and cricket, and maybe not in that order.”
Khan — who Luther has called “the grandfather of organized cricket in this area” — has been key to the process in Chesterfield, providing a knowledge base of the game.
“The [Beulah Neighborhood Park] field will be one of the best grounds for cricket in Virginia for sure, and maybe on the East Coast,” Khan says.
In 2017, a clay pitch was built between two of the five soccer fields at Wilder Middle School, and those two fields were converted into cricket grounds. Khan says that having two dimensionally accurate cricket grounds — including one with lights and a scoreboard — will make Henrico an attractive location for tournaments.
“Once the Beulah Park pitch is straightened out, on any given weekend, we can attract a tournament from anywhere in the East Coast,” Khan says.
Khan’s vision does not stop there. “I tell all the county employees: ‘One day, the United States of America will win the Cricket World Cup,’” he said. “Right now, we don’t qualify, but one day, we will win.”
“Cricket is older than baseball,” he says. “William Byrd played cricket. Thomas Jefferson’s grandfather played cricket. I’ve said it today and I’ll keep on saying it: The United States will win the World Cup one day very soon, and we could be proud to be just a small part of it.”
