Cricket players in Plymouth have been asking for a place to play for years, and the west metro city is finally granting their request.
A cricket pitch to accommodate the fast-growing sport will be one of the prime amenities of the Meadows, a park the city plans to build over the next two years on a weedy field on the southwest corner of Peony Lane N. and Chankahda Trail.
"We are tired of playing on driveways and cul-de-sacs," said Milind Sohoni, a Plymouth resident who led the effort to get the facility included in the $6 million park project. "People get injured if they slide on a driveway. You play with a hard ball and have to have a specific ground."
Played on an oval-shaped field, cricket has similarities to baseball in that one team hits a ball and attempts to score runs while the team in the field attempts to get the batters out. An inning ends when all 10 batters are out, and the 11-member teams then trade positions. The team scoring the most runs wins the match.
Sohoni played cricket growing up in his native India, where the sport is close to a religion. The game, dating to the 16th century, is believed to have started in southeast England. As the British empire expanded, cricket spread to places such as Australia, New Zealand, southern Africa, the West Indies, India and Pakistan.
But the game never really caught on in the United States until more recently. The Minnesota Cricket Association began in the 1980s. And this summer, Major League Cricket made its debut with six teams in the United States.
Cricket pitches have popped up in recent years in Minneapolis, Brooklyn Park, Chaska and Maple Grove.
Sohoni, a Wayzata school board member, moved to Plymouth in 1995. As others who had played the game growing up followed, he saw the need for a pitch. He first brought the idea to the city in 2019.
