Caribbean

Dressed in white with their long, paddle-shaped bats in hand, Aviation High School’s inaugural cricket team prepares for a match against DeWitt Clinton High in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Jamaican Patois, and Guyanese Creole fill the air as warm-ups begin.

These are the sounds of cricket in New York City, which last April became the first school district in the United States to introduce cricket as a varsity sport. The game is one of the most enduring legacies of the British Empire — and it’s found new life in 16 city high schools made up primarily of students of South Asian and Caribbean descent. The young athletes see the game as a continuation of the cultural traditions their parents instilled in them.

Unfamiliar to Americans

“Cricket, it’s from my native country,” said Vik Singh, Aviation High School team’s student manager, who is of Guyanese decent. “My dad played. And basically everybody before him played cricket, so it’s good to know that I am also playing cricket.”

Widely considered the world’s second most popular sport after soccer, cricket is unfamiliar to many Americans. In New York City’s West Indian and South Asian communities, however, the game is a treasured export from home. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ozone Park, home to Singh’s Sporting Goods, one of the country’s largest suppliers of cricket equipment.

Customers drive from as far away as Connecticut and Philadelphia to buy bats, balls, and gear at Singh’s. The neighborhood’s bars advertise televised matches in their windows and many residents sign up for satellite television just to follow their favorite teams.

“Cricket is like a religion to me,” said Ricky Singh. “It’s a part of your culture. It’s an everyday part of your life.” After observing immigrants playing the game in places like Ozone Park, Eric Goldstein, the chief executive for School Support Services of the Public School Athletic League, followed a hunch, convinced an interest in the sport existed among many city high schoolers.

“The people who are playing are either recent immigrants or first-generation Americans from immigrant families where cricket was very much part of the sporting culture of where they come from,” said Goldstein. “What we wanted to do is to embrace that — that’s what New York, America, is all about. It’s all about immigration and embracing change and welcoming the new groups.”

Many of the students currently playing cricket did not participate in sports before cricket went varsity. Aviation’s Coach Wesley Henry believes the game helps players who are recent arrivals adjust to America.

“This is a sport their parents understand,” said Henry, 34, who immigrated to the United States from Guyana as a teenager. “This is a sport they play in their country. So it’s a smooth transition for the students to actually come on to the field and participate.”

‘Cricket in Their Blood’

The sport also attracts athletes without any ties to cricket-playing nations. Cricket novice Shamir Alcequiez, a Dominican American, joined DeWitt Clinton’s team when his swimming coach suggested he try out. He said it took him a long time to adjust to the game.

“They got the cricket in their blood and I don’t,” said Alcequiez, 15, who also plays baseball. “So it’s difficult.”

His heart remains with baseball, however. “I can’t lie,” he said. “If I got to choose, I choose baseball.”

Yet, in baseball-obsessed New York, cricket has its devotees. “I feel a lot of connection because when I play cricket, I am a member of my country,” said DeWitt Clinton’s Sohail Banaras, 14, who was born in Pakistan. “When I play baseball, I don’t feel as much excitement as when I play cricket.”

Mdarman Mannan, a Bangladesh-born Aviation High student who tried out for both baseball and cricket this season, agrees.

“It’s a new thing,” he said. “Baseball, you could say, is an old thing in America.”

A Bronx-based fast-food franchise has steadily risen over the last two decades, its growth tied to West Indian immigration to New York.

Golden Krust, a Jamaican-style restaurant and bakery, has filled a niche by providing inexpensive and familiar food for Caribbean immigrants – and it’s customer base is now expanding to non-West Indians.

“It’s the only franchise that really sells Caribbean food,” said Annette Runcie, who owns a Golden Krust franchise in Queens Village. “I think there was a big demand, especially in New York City, and it was just a perfect thing to do.”

She added, “Most Caribbean folks get home-cooked meals every day, there’s really not much fast food for them to eat.”

Going Mainstream

Still, the company has been able to expand to non-Caribbean neighborhoods as well as beyond New York.

The Caribbean population was critical for the growth of the company, said Golden Krust President and CEO Lowell Hawthorne. “I know we have gotten that base and have been successful in it,” he said. “It helps to propel the organization to the mainstream market.”

Hawthorne, a Jamaican immigrant, opened the first Golden Krust bakery in the Bronx with his family in 1989. Three years later, there were 17 Golden Krust stores. Now there are more than 115 spread across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Maryland.

Yet Golden Krust thrives most in areas like eastern Queens, which has one of the most concentrated populations of West Indians in the city. More than a fifth of the immigrant population came from Jamaica, and a large bulk of the rest originated in Haiti, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, according to the 2000 census.

In Community Board 13 alone, there are five Golden Krust restaurants.

“The company’s going to consistently grow its brand in our core market, which is basically the large Caribbean community, which are in a couple of new states,” said Hawthorne. “We’re going to expand from our market to the mainstream market. The company plans to open about 30 to 40 stores per year.”

Runcie, who was born in Jamaica, credits her store’s success to heavy amounts of foot traffic and a nearby bus stop. She said while most of her customers are Caribbean, her restaurant attracts a strong mix of other ethnicities.

Fast Food Friendly

“If you locate in a certain area where people are, you have a clientele already, that is No. 1, that’s key,” said Vera Weekes, education director of the Immigration Center at Medgar Evers College.

Jamaican food lends itself well to fast food, said Ramin Ganeshram, Caribbean food expert and strategist for Iconoculture, which studies consumer trends. Beef patties are cheap and can be eaten with one hand, which makes them both portable and convenient.

“On a more cultural level, you can say anything that’s a street food in the country of origin has a very good chance of becoming a fast food in the United States,” she said. “Street food is the fast food of the rest of the world.”

And non-West Indians are catching on. “We are gaining acceptance from pretty much all markets right now,” said Golden Krust spokeswoman Candice Richards. “North Americans are just gravitating towards West Indian cuisine as they become more familiar with the Islands through their vacations and just interacting with the many West Indians that live in New York and the United States.”

The ‘Real Deal’

Golden Krust’s fast-food environment helps, Ganeshram said. “If you go into a place and see a light board of food and photos and there are trays,” she said, people understand that “it’s a comfortable environment to try something new.”

At Golden Krust, you get full meals. “You get the real deal,” Weekes said.

“The real deal” is anything from the festival, a fried corn fritter about a half a foot long, to the oxtail stew. Customers can find the super salty and peppery ackee with salt fish, a dish that resembles scrambled eggs but is made with ackee, a highly poisonous fruit that takes special care to harvest just right.

Golden Krust also offers basic fare like spicy (and non spicy) beef patties, curried goat, stew chicken, ginger-infused ice tea and an array of West Indian colas.

“It is very good, instead of the fast food, hamburgers and stuff like that, I think this is more appropriate,” said Margery Baptist, who immigrated from Haiti and stopped off at the Queens Village Golden Krust one recent day. “If one parent can’t cook the rice, beans and vegetables, at least they can pick it up, they have it here, instead of the fried food.”

Even non-West Indians appreciate Golden Krust’s homemade taste. “It’s hard to find a restaurant that serves this kind of food,” Long Islander Angel Figueroa said outside the Golden Krust on 8th Ave. in Midtown. “When you have it here and it taste like homemade, you got a winner,” he said about his favorite item, oxtail, which he said he first tried at a Jamaican party.

Though Ganeshram believes Golden Krust may hit America the way of Chipotle, the popular Mexican food franchise, did, she does not see it branching out worldwide.

“The taste literally for American things is why Burger King and McDonald’s and Pizza Hut have become globalized, it’s not the food itself,” she said. “If you look at with that logic I don’t think something like Golden Krust will become global because it doesn’t represent something American — it represents the Caribbean.”