Tape ball cricket gains ground on Long Island

"Let’s go, boys!"

To the untrained eye, the 20 or so men spread across the field behind William L. Buck School in Valley Stream could be any group of guys playing pickup softball on a Saturday morning. Someone throws a ball, someone swings a bat, and someone jogs to another base.

But they’re playing cricket. Not the posh cricket you might have seen in British period films, but a modernized version that is growing in popularity and legitimacy around the world, including on Long Island.

"We do it for the love of cricket, for the love of sport," says Arslan Khokhar, 28, player and cofounder-manager of Franklin Falcons, a group that has become an actual team and is expanding into a club.

It is tape ball cricket. What Wiffle ball is to baseball and pickleball is to tennis, tape ball cricket is to traditional cricket: a safer, cheaper, more accessible version of the traditional game. And like Wiffle ball and pickleball, tape ball cricket is no longer just the poor relation; it is played formally worldwide, with 27 countries fielding national teams for world championships, under the governance of the Houston-based International Tapeball Council, established in 2017.

Bringing the sport to Long Island

You can see the development through the Falcons, which started with four or five players in 2019 when Khokhar got tired of traveling to the city to play. They now boast 159 members on the Meetup app, show up in numbers every weekend, proudly wear team jerseys and caps emblazoned with their logo and play area teams in tournaments and friendlies.

Khokhar, an electrical engineer originally from Pakistan, grew up playing tape ball, which started there in the 1960s as a solution to the access problem. "It is really common in Pakistan," he says. "The cricket ball is very hard, so you need protection: helmet and pads, and they cost a lot. We were kids; we didn’t have that. So we wrapped a tennis ball in electrical tape. The ball isn’t so hard and it doesn’t go as far, so you can play even in a basketball court with less than eight players."

While the 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup at Eisenhower Park may have been the first exposure to cricket for many Long Islanders, the sport has a long history, starting in England as far back as the 1300s with country boys throwing rocks. These days it is second only to soccer in world popularity, with 30 million registered players and an estimated 2.5 billion fans globally.

But the traditional cricket ball is still rock hard and that makes actually playing cricket less accessible. Tape ball is less likely to break windows or bones, can be played on virtually any hard, flat surface, and equipment costs very little compared to the classic game.

One of the teams the Falcons play is Huntington Cricket Club (HCC), which fields a junior and senior team, managed by Waqas Nazir, 32. He is happy about the more local competition. "We’ve been playing for 15 years," he says. "We used to only go to Brooklyn for tournaments and events, but now there’s Franklin Falcons, and there are teams in East Northport and Selden."

Camaraderie and community 

Back in Valley Stream, the players say that a shared love of the sport brought them together, but it's the camaraderie that keeps them coming back.

"There is no pressure to perform; it’s just for fun," says Asraf Shafeek, 30, of South Ozone Park, Queens, a former pro who played in his native Guyana. "We create bonds and build on this. Today we are having a potluck after the game; I go hiking and fishing with some of the guys. I have been here [in the U.S.] five years and it was hard to make friends until this."

Stony Brook University student Arham Ikram, 23, who, like most Falcons, is from Pakistan, says playing is worth the long drive. "The atmosphere is really cool," he says. "There are a lot of players with passion; it’s a great journey and it’s growing a lot."

Junel Islam, 34, a graphic designer from Bangladesh, lives in Lynbrook. "I like everything about it," he says. "I like winning, learning from each other, making friends, playing as a team. It’s a real motivation."

They all say that anyone can play once they learn the basics, which they are happy to teach. Tanner Zalud, 31, of Wantagh, a parish development coordinator for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, is a wrestler who encountered the game through his Guyanese wife. "I love the passion and it is cool to see how different countries have different styles," he says. "Now I am trying to get my son into it; he’s 4 and he’s the next generation."