Cricket is booming in this Bay Area suburb - sparking a turf war in youth sports

Bullying. Abusing political connections. Unfair use of city resources.

These are some of the allegations playing out in the Bay Area's Tri-Valley as two San Ramon youth cricket organizations have been locked in a battle over who gets to play on the city's fields.

On the surface, the fight is over youth sports. But the dispute reflects a deeper problem for the city about how to keep up with explosive demand for a sport that is popular among one of its fastest-growing communities.

"We are not united in advocating for more fields, rather we are fighting for the existing fields," said Rameshu Immadi, the founder of one of the youth cricket leagues in San Ramon. "That's exactly what's happening in the city of San Ramon because the population has grown so much."

The Tri-Valley - which includes San Ramon, Dublin, Pleasanton, Danville and Livermore - is home to some of the fastest-growing cities in the state. The region's explosive growth is fueled by Asian Americans and in particular, Indian Americans, who have flocked to the area in search of good schools and bigger homes. It's unsurprising that San Ramon is a hotspot for cricket, a popular sport in Southeast Asia, considering a quarter of its population is Indian or Indian American.

Over the last decade, the city has converted six baseball diamonds and four soccer fields at various parks to create three regulation cricket fields - the only city in the Tri-Valley with that many cricket grounds. The estimated cost to build a new cricket facility - which has a ground of nearly 500 feet in diameter at its center - is about $1 million, according to the city.

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Families and league representatives say the city's three fields are still not enough.

The boom in the sport began in 2016, when Immadi started a weekly, casual youth pickup game with about a dozen kids at the city's one cricket ground. Soon, more parents wanted their children to join the games so Immadi approached the San Ramon Cricket Association, an adult league started by Sridhar Verose in 2008, and persuaded Verose to create a youth team.

That same year, Immadi said he started attending city council and school board meetings to urge officials to build more proper cricket pitches, which are required for youth games. (Adults can play on baseball fields.)

Eventually, the city built a second cricket field, and enrollment in Immadi's youth league continued to grow. He decided to cap the enrollment at 400. But limiting enrollment didn't diminish interest, and players enrolled in other leagues that popped up.

Immadi has since criticized the city, saying he was forced to cap enrollment due to a lack of cricket space and lay off coaches. Now, other leagues are poaching players and taking field space that he fought to get built. The city allocates field grounds through a reservation system that gives priority to teams based on the number of San Ramon residents served, among other factors.

"I capped my program to 400 people because I don't have field capacity," Immadi said. "Now you brought other field users who are trying to serve the community because I stopped serving the community."

One of those field users is the California Cricket Academy, a youth league started by Hemant Buch and his wife in 2003 in the South Bay, which expanded to San Ramon three years ago due to interest from players there. But when he started reserving space in the city, Buch said he was surprised by Immadi's resistance. Buch said Immadi will fight with city staff to get his desired field space and pressure other leagues to give up their space.

"There is a lot of bullying," Buch said. "I feel that pressure. There was a lot of pushback."

Immadi said he's unbothered by the accusations.

"They say we are monopolizing but they don't understand the 10 years of struggle to advocate for the fields," Immadi said.

Immadi and Buch have often sparred over reservations in emails to city staff.

Buch has also argued that it was inappropriate for Immadi to copy Verose, now a city council member, on some of those emails because of Verose's ties to SRCA. Buch said Verose is "constantly pushing back on staff" to preserve SRCA's access to field space.

"I see an apparent conflict of interest here, no matter how well-intentioned it may be," Buch wrote in an email to city staff last November explaining his concerns.

Verose told the Chronicle that he long ago resigned from leadership in the SRCA due to his role in the city and has avoided any conflict-of-interest issues by not intervening on behalf of the SRCA, despite the fact that he and his son play for the SRCA. Instead, he has always encouraged city staff to follow proper policies.

The city's parks commission sets policy surrounding park and field usage, which is then approved by the city council. City staff then follow the policy to allocate space to different groups.

Verose recently told the Chronicle he feels the process now works well.

In November, Verose held a meeting between Buch and Immadi to settle their disagreements about field space allocation. In that meeting, Buch agreed to move one of their weekly practices to another ground.

To help minimize fighting over facilities, the city changed its policy this year to require new sports leagues to have been in operation for three years before they can reserve field space.

Still, tensions lingered. Immadi filed an appeal in February over a reservation that CCA made. The city ruled against him, finding that he had fewer San Ramon residents enrolled than required under the current guidelines. If Immadi fails to boost the number of enrolled San Ramon residents by September, he would lose priority in field reservations, according to the city.

Meanwhile, Buch said in the last few months, their relationship has improved and he's hopeful that they can turn a corner - as long as he doesn't reserve more field space than what he's already been allocated. San Ramon Mayor Mark Armstrong said the city would like to expand its cricket facilities but it has limited space and other sports to consider.

"You might solve the problem between cricket clubs, but you might create a problem between cricket and soccer or cricket and Little League," Armstrong said. "Are you fixing it overall? Or are you shifting the problem from cricket user groups to somebody else? It is pretty complex."

Families say they're aware of clashes over field space. Shahed Latif, whose 6-year-old daughter Sohana and 8-year-old son Sarim play in SRCA's youth league, said the conflict is a testament to how much the sport has grown in popularity in the East Bay.

Latif said when he and his wife first moved to San Ramon in the late 1990s from London, he started a casual cricket game with five other people. Within a few years, their game increased to 100 players.

He said he'd like to see cities in the East Bay invest in more cricket facilities.

"I come from London where cricket pitches are all over the place," Latif said. "But there is a definite lack of fields here."

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This story was originally published July 6, 2026 at 10:42 AM.