After watching cricket on the T.V. with her father for years, Pooja Ganesh decided to pick up a bat at the age of seven.
Ten years later, she tried out for the Team USA under-19 cricket team, and she made it.
Playing for the national team for a sport that isn’t too popular in the United States inspires her to continue in her cricket career, and hopefully make it to the Olympics in Los Angeles.
“It’s not a popular sport, but it’s growing,” Pooja said. “I see a lot more girls playing now. We’re definitely catching up to other countries.”
For the first time in over a century, the sport will return to the Olympics in 2028. The last time it was played was in the summer 1900 in Paris.
Cricket is a sport that originated in England, and spread to other countries such as Australia, India, and New Zealand. It involves a similar play to baseball, including a flat bat and a bounced pitch.
In the region, many south Asians gather to play in a club called the American Cricket Academy. There is a minor league team in the region called the St. Louis Americans who play annually where they can end up playing in the major leagues.
But for women, there is no set pathway as of yet. Pooja Ganesh hopes in the future there will be an easier way to make it to the big leagues as a woman.
Pooja said she is looking forward to trying out for the professional national team. But first, she wants to go to college.
“I hope to have this as my job, that would be the dream,” Pooja said. “I’ll probably play in college. I’ll be balancing both cricket and college.”
A major barrier to cricket’s growing popularity is. The lack of college scholarships for those who play in high school. Pooja’s father, whose first name is Ganesh, said he goes to schools in the Rockwood district to help inspire other kids to get into the sport.
“If someone chooses to play cricket, it is purely out of passion,” he said. “It is them standing against the crowd saying this is what I want to do, regardless if I get a scholarship or not. It takes a lot of courage.”
Ganesh wakes up with Pooja on breaks around 5:30 a.m. to take her to practice her batting. He said she wakes up on her own accord, and wants to be the best that she can be at the sport.
“It is her dream, and we are only facilitators as parents. We try to do as much as we can to help her achieve her goals,” he said.
With the Olympics coming up, the teen has a unique opportunity to become an Olympian. Her mother, Usha Ganesh, said she knew Pooja would be an athlete since she was a toddler. When she threw her a princess birthday party, all Pooja wanted to do was go outside and play catch with her friends.
“Cricket started with my husband because he is madly in love with the sport,” Usha said. “For her age, we’re in St. Louis where there are not much Indian population here, so she all the while was with the boys. But that didn’t deter her, she was on it.”
Pooja became the youngest girl on the national team when she was just 14. Normally, a player must be 15 years old to try out, but Team USA and the International Cricket Council decided to make an exception based on her talent.
Her father said he is proud of his daughter for sticking it out on an all boys team, who didn’t hold back when it came time to compete. He said he sees her achieving her dream of making the professional franchise teams that she wants to make.
“It’s not easy to make it to the national team,” Ganesh said. “It is a very small number actually, so to think that she belongs to that small group of people, is a great honor.”
Pooja said she is excited to see where cricket will take her next. At 17 years old she has already traveled to South Africa and Malaysia with Team USA. And although the team didn’t make it to the finals this year, she said she sees potential in cricket becoming a more common sport for young girls in the United States, as the team keeps improving.
“We’re not just here to participate, but to compete,” she said. “The Olympics are in 2028 in the U.S.A. Hopefully, Team U.S.A can show on our home turf that we’re here to compete.”