Major cricket complex in Prairie View is Houston man’s field of dreams

Tanweer Ahmed inside his cricket batting cage, where his and members of his cricket league team practice, next to the parking lot of his office June 22, 2018, in Houston, TX. (Michael Wyke / For the Chronicle) Tanweer Ahmed inside his cricket batting cage, where his and members of his cricket league team practice, next to the parking lot of his office June 22, 2018, in Houston, TX. (Michael Wyke / For the Chronicle) Photo: Michael Wyke, Freelance / For The Chronicle Photo: Michael Wyke, Freelance / For The Chronicle Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Major cricket complex in Prairie View is Houston man’s field of dreams 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

Growing up, Tanweer Ahmed’s mother, Kalsoom, always discouraged him from playing cricket. They were a poor family. His mother sold vegetables and milk from the few cows they had in his hometown of Sialkot in Punjab, Pakistan.

“Cricket doesn’t cost that much, but every penny matters when you don’t have anything,” Ahmed said.

Kalsoom put those pennies toward getting him and four siblings through the best school in the city. He had one school uniform, one pair of shoes, and one pair of clothes to wear at home.

“That’s all we could afford,” he said.

Today, Ahmed is owner of more than 150 franchise restaurants in four states, plus an energy company and half of a medical research venture. And he is busy pouring millions of his own dollars into building one of the nation’s largest cricket complexes. It will serve children and adults when it opens in early September, and later it could host professional international matches.

The project is rising from the plains of Prairie View, less than a 15-minute drive from the Grand Parkway on the outskirts of Houston, in prominent view of drivers on the newly refurbished U.S. 290.

MORE: For cricket's American breakthrough, look no further than Houston

Plans for 10 to 12 fields on 86 acres have raised eyebrows among some locals who question the viability of such a facility in the rural expanse around a college town of about 6,000. But this is no quixotic attempt to recapture some piece of a lost childhood far from home. Houston has been waiting for this, observers say. If he builds it, players will come.

“There’s certainly a large demand” in Houston, said Eric Parthen, U.S. project manager for the International Cricket Council, which is not involved in the project. “It will immediately be one of the larger facilities in the country, if not the largest.”

A recent study by the council, in concert with the market research firm Nielsen, found 200,000 people playing the game in the United States, and it counted millions of fans.

“It’s untapped potential in the youth market,” Parthen said. “The U.S. has the largest immigrant population in the world, a lot of those coming from South Asian cultures, and these are children growing up in families passionate about cricket.”

Houston cricket is scattered. There are only nine fields between Humble and East Bernard, none with direct highway access, and players drive all over to reach matches and practices, Ahmed said.

The city’s cricket scene is poised to balloon, but lack of space holds it back. A dozen teams are waiting to join the city’s largest organization, the Houston Cricket League, said its captain, Iqra Farooqui.

Ahmed’s complex will provide a new hub for cricket matches and youth academies, and it will have avid participants right next door at Prairie View A&M University.

Tony Daniels got an inkling that something was up about a year and half ago, when he saw a couple dozen young men practicing cricket — on a tennis court.

“So while we’re looking to add lacrosse fields, soccer fields, football and kickball, there was some conversation about at least a batting pitch so they could practice batting,” said Daniels, director of recreational sports for the university.

Now he’s got about 60 students ready to form teams, and they’ll have more than just a pitch.

“I’m pretty sure the community will rally around the sport,” he said.

Just a few years ago, the idea of a major cricket complex on the fields of Prairie View seemed unfathomable, Daniels said, but today it makes sense, with a surging immigrant population from the Indian subcontinent, home to a massive fan base and recreational play, and some of the world’s top-ranked professional cricketers.

The Indian and Pakistani immigrant populations in Houston grew 87 percent and 73 percent, respectively, from 2000 to 2012, a Migration Policy Institute report found. By comparison, the total foreign-born growth rate for Houston during the same period was 47 percent.

Ahmed searched for land last year, first buying 16 acres of the Prairie View site at Liendo Parkway. Then he added an adjacent 68 acres, purchased from Wolff Cos. for an undisclosed price, and another two.

The project will be a boon for Prairie View, Mayor David Allen said.

“We have such a huge need for these types of things that generate revenue to help with city services, police officers, public works people and all of those,” he said.

Rising land values, prospective hotels and sales taxes associated with the cricket development, and with Houston’s westward growth, have the potential to double the town’s budget of $3.2 million, Allen said. The market value of some surrounding parcels has more than doubled in recent years, appraisal records show.

Ahmed’s project is part of an effort to grow U.S. cricket simultaneously at the national and community level, in a manner modeled after soccer’s explosion decades ago.

At the top, work has moved in fits and starts in the last decade. The United States has a national team but only one field, in Florida, that is certified by the International Cricket Council and thus suitable for the highest level international matches.

Other U.S. cricket organizations are currently folding into the new USA Cricket, which hopes to become the country’s globally recognized governing body after the previous one was suspended by the international council over governance and financial problems.

At the same time, there’s a $2.4 billion commercial venture by Global Sports Ventures to start a professional U.S. league.

At the bottom, it’s all about the kids. Ahmed wants to establish an academy at the complex to cater to children and coaches from local schools.

He’s also hoping to build a field with stadium seating that could become the nation’s second ICC-certified facility, making it possible to host major international events here.

“I’m not going to be able to do it by myself,” Ahmed said. “Down the road I will need funding — city, state, sponsors, businesspeople.”

Closer on the horizon, if funding materializes: lights. They’ll allow night games to escape the summer heat, and they’ll put the spectacle of a new kind of Friday night lights out on the highway for everyone to see.

“For all of the players to play at the same place and same time, and get to know each other more from the competitions as we move forward, it’s really good for the youth,” said Farooqui, the league captain.

Ahmed, 50, recalls the small field where he and his peers in Sialkot scrabbled together Sunday matches, before it was converted to a school, leaving them with no place to play. In 1988, he moved to California and got too busy for cricket, working three jobs a day.

A couple of years ago, some employees asked him to sponsor their team. They coaxed him back into the game. He still had some skills. He installed a batting cage and some lights outside his office building. People from the neighborhood started coming to watch. A teenager and his dad started coming to practice. Ahmed’s son took it up.

He’s a long way — geographically and financially — from those early days when even buying a bat was out of the question. He plans to sustain the complex with dues and fees from leagues and lessons under his new nonprofit, the Kalsoom Prairie View Cricket Association.

“The reason I want to dedicate it to my mother is, hey mom, you did your best to raise us in the best possible way under the circumstances you had,” Ahmed said. “Whatever I have, I owe it to you.”

mark.collette@chron.com