Club scene: We want diversity!

HUW TURBERVILL: Indian Gymkhana Cricket Club are a strong club with a huge South Asian playing base, but they want everyone to join

Indian Gymkhana Cricket Club is ticking along nicely. Based in Osterley, west London, they believe they are the biggest Asian club in the country. With a rich, 102-year history, splendid facilities and 160 colts, there is no need to panic whatsoever. They are doing something they do not have to do, though. They are pleading with non-Asians to join them.

The club wondered if there is a big hurdle to that, however: their name. They thought about dropping ‘Indian’, but ruled it out on historical grounds. They are keen to stress they are a multicultural club, though, with cricket secretary Sanjay Sood saying: “Cricket clubs can be a force for good, binding communities together.”

The club is close to Osterley Tube, on the Piccadilly Line, near Heathrow; take a left along the bustling Great West Road, then cross at the lights and find it in Thornbury Avenue, nestling amid dense housing. In the clubhouse is a full-time restaurant, serving enticing South Asian cuisine, and a busy bar.

The genial Sood is waiting for me, along with Charlie Puckett, former secretary of the Middlesex County Cricket League and the first white Briton in recent history to be elected to the cricket committee, and Gulfraz Riaz, chairman of the National Asian Cricket Council. We talk and eat – lamb and chicken curries with rice and tasty bread and samosas.

“When I started we had parents phoning up saying, ‘Will you get my son to play for England?’”

“We’d like a different aspect to the club,” says Sood. “The shell will remain but the inside will change. It’s more than a club – it’s a community – 102 years. We have enough players but we want a mix – Asian, white, African-Caribbean!”

Despite the name, it is not just Indians who play there, though. “We have a lot of British Pakistanis,” Sood says. “English, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi and Urdu – you hear it all here.”

The club was founded in 1916 to cater for the small Asian community in west London (in those days India, and what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh were the Raj). The ground was bought by His Highness, The Maharaja of Patiala Sir Bhupinder Singh, and Lord Hawke no less was their first president, from 1916–1938.

It used to be the first stop for international touring teams from the subcontinent, and many famous players and teams visited. Clive Lloyd brought his West Indies side in 1973; in 1983 India honoured a commitment to play there even though they won the World Cup at Lord’s the day before. Sunil Gavaskar was caught on the boundary. Aravinda de Silva played here at 17. Amar Virdi was with the club until 11 and visits regularly. 

The first team – one of four fielded on Saturdays – plays in division two of the Middlesex Cricket League; there is a Sunday side, and the girls entered the local league for the first time two summers ago. Former India skipper Chander Kaul organises that.

^{Sanjay Sood and Charlie Puckett}

The club had 550 guests – including Kapil Dev, Ken Clarke and Lord Patel – for their centenary dinner in 2017 (a year too late!); and everyone is understandably proud of the clubhouse’s gym, sauna, banqueting suite and six vast changing rooms. The club also stages football and wellbeing for over-50s.

Despite being one of the biggest if not the biggest club in the Hounslow area, of 160 colts, 159 are from an Asian background, however. The club wants to reach 200 this summer, with white British families joining. The parents are ambitious. Sood says: “When I started we had parents phoning up saying, ‘Will you get my son to play for England?’”

English clubs are often empty on a wet winter Wednesday, but Gymkhana was booming when I visited, the bar packed with cricketers cheering Manchester United in the Champions League.

Riaz, who is also cricket development manager for the Club Cricket Conference, admires Gymkhana’s stance. “It is commendable that Indian Gymkhana is making real efforts in reaching out to players of all abilities, ages and experiences, both male and female,” he said. “The historical name and heritage of the club will remain and this is something that Indian Gymkhana should be proud of. It is important that this remains the case after 102 years. The integration of the overall cricketing family is vital, however, and the club and cricket committee must be congratulated.”

"Despite being one of the biggest if not the biggest club in the Hounslow area, of 160 colts, 159 are from an Asian background. The club wants to reach 200 this summer, with white British families joining"

Puckett says: “I was 10 when Kenyan Indians arrived in the UK, so it’s time everyone started playing cricket together. Hounslow CC folded, and there’s still Wycombe House and Osterley nearby; they have Asian players but it’s not all Asian…” He fears the cost of watching cricket deters youngsters. “I’ve heard it will be £350 to go to Lord’s for the World Cup, and with cricket not on terrestrial TV…”

Sood would like to see African-Caribbean Britons return to the game. “When one comes, they can bring two or three more with them.”

The club’s facilities are excellent. There is not quite enough space for a 1sts and 2nds pitch because of league stipulations, but accommodating two eventually has not been ruled out. The club would have to move a giant mound of earth in one corner nicknamed ‘Mount Gymkhana’. The club now has a second ground, where Hounslow CC used to be, at Sutton Lane, which will be ready from 2019.

Let us hope everyone in the area starts to enjoy the club now the plea has gone out…