Beyond the Wickets: A Student’s Love for his Childhood Game
While many Jordan students go to the basketball courts or the soccer fields on the weekends, Jordan senior Asif Mangal heads to the local cricket grounds in parks in Durham, Raleigh, and Greensboro.
Mangal was born in Afghanistan and moved to the United States three years ago. He has been playing cricket for 10 years, developing a love for the sport while growing up and playing with his friends. Cricket is especially popular in South Asia, including Afghanistan, and has an estimated 2.5 billion fans worldwide. However, the
sport is still growing in popularity in the United States.
Mangal hopes to establish a cricket team at Jordan. He said that
they currently have 11 members, just enough for a full starting line-up. He explained that the sport's popularity varies across the country. “In our state it's not famous but in Texas, for example, a lot of people play cricket,” he said. His experience reflects the potential for cricket to reach more communities across the United States.
For Mangal, cricket is more than just a sport; it is also an important connection to his culture and upbringing. He even said “I hope to be professional one day”. This aspiration shows how much cricket truly means to him, with his ambitions of one day doing it for his job. While growing up, Mangal was surrounded by soccer and cricket alike, but cricket stuck with him all the way to today.
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