Thriving Cricket League Helps Immigrants Assimilate

Immigrants in Iowa are getting together and playing sports that they grew up playing.   - - Donna Poisl

Posted by Beth Dalbey (Editor)

West Des Moines is gaining another distinction with a sports league that preserves some of the cultural heritage of workers who have been attracted to the city’s fast-growing IT sector.

The weekend cricket league gives an opportunity for people like Rajesh Chalamalasetti, who works at Principal Financial Group, to get together with others from his native India to play a sport that is very much a part of his cultural heritage, the Des Moines Register reports.

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11. Each team has to bowl and bat. Considered a gentleman’s game, comedian Robin Williams once said “cricket is basically baseball on Valium,” but it is the world’s second-largest sport behind soccer.
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