In 2021, Lila Bringhurst Community Park held its grand opening. Lily Mei, the Fremont mayor at the time, expressed the city’s goal to be a 15-minute city.
The term describes a city planning concept that gives residents access to amenities within a 15-minute walk. With the opening of the park, the city’s goal was to ensure a green space for residents in the neighborhood.
Fremont has continued to strive toward this goal, and in March 2022 the city council adopted a Park and Recreation Master Plan for a 13-acre plot of land on Palm Avenue, adjacent to Interstate 680.
As the project ramps up, public input on the park’s design has sparked discussion on what sports fields the new park should offer.
Pickleball took over the nation just a few years ago, changing the way cities plan and design parks. However, this time the discussion is regarding a new rising sport: Cricket.
On Oct. 15, the recreation commission held a special meeting to hear public comments on the proposed park. A Fremont resident shared a presentation with his concerns, from safety to the misalignment of what the surrounding community needs.
“This plan prioritizes a narrow group of users while ignoring the diverse, everyday needs of our neighborhood,” said the resident. “We urge decision-makers to consider a more inclusive park design that benefits the entire community.”
Cricket may not be the first sports field people think of when imaging a local park, but there has been a rise in cricket in the U.S. in the past few years.
In 2023, Major League Cricket (MLC) was launched in the U.S., bridging a connection from American fans to the sport that is most prominent in India, Australia and England. In 2025, the sport got even closer to local fans when the Oakland Coliseum became the host of nine MLC games in June.
For the first time, the East Bay was witness to the enthusiasm of the local Major League Cricket fan base.
But the enthusiasm goes beyond just being a fan. According to Hemant Buch, founder of California Cricket Academy (CCA), there are at least 25 youth cricket teams and 10-12 adult teams in Fremont alone.
Buch created CCA in 2003. Fremont is one of the academy’s main cities, but teams also represent Cupertino, San Jose, Dublin, San Ramon, San Francisco and more.
“It’s a nonprofit organization so it shows the growth of the academy,” said Buch. “More than the academy, it’s showing the growth in the game.”
The Bay Area Cricket Alliance (BACA) is another cricket nonprofit organization established in 1999 and based in Milpitas. According to their website, the club is Premier League Cricket which hosts and has teams that travel across the country to compete.
The nonprofit includes 86 teams from the Bay Area, including teams from Fremont and Hayward.
Along with running CCA, Buch has spent 12 years working with the California government to include cricket in high schools. Bill ARC 211, which passed in Aug. 2024, urges “the California Interscholastic Federation to take steps towards officially recognizing the game of cricket in California.”
Now the ball is in the court of California high schools. “The only thing now is that high schools have to start forming the clubs,” said Buch. The potential of high school students becoming involved in cricket may put more strain on the few local fields available.
Fremont currently has only two cricket fields, Central Park Synthetic Cricket and Soccer Field off of Stevenson Boulevard, and the other at Northgate Community Park on the intersection of Paseo Padre Parkway and Milton Street.
With so much demand for a cricket pitch in Fremont and only two available pitches in the city, Buch describes challenges players go through to play their game. “They go to baseball fields and go to other cities,” he said. “It’s a greatly inconvenient thing.”
With the lack of cricket facilities, local players have had to get creative. Along with having to find fields elsewhere or play on baseball and soccer fields, using batting cages is the norm.
“Early in the morning, if you check the baseball cages, they are playing cricket,” said Buch.
Although cricket is not as well known in the East Bay as baseball or soccer, Fremont has been the home to cricket enthusiasts since the ‘90s, either as fans or as recreational or club players.
As the U.S. saw the rise of pickleball, Fremont parks and recreation found themselves converting tennis courts into pickleball courts—and finally building a pickleball court in Central Park in 2024 to keep up with the demands of “pickleheads.”
Now that the rise of cricket—the second most popular sport in the world by fans—has begun to cause a stir in the Tri-Cities, Palm Avenue Community Park may have come right on time for the cricket community.
Said Buch, “I think this is a great opportunity for Fremont to meet its youth’s needs and meet the recreational needs of the community.”
