A cricket star aims to boost the sport and build on Philly’s deep history with a new pro team

Liam Plunkett has seen a lot of things in his nearly two decades as a professional athlete.

He has played for pro teams in his native England, as well as Australia, India, and South Africa. He has traveled the globe with his national team, playing in some of his sport’s most famous rivalries. Three years ago, he starred in a World Cup title triumph on home soil.

The story he’s part of now is unlike any he’s seen before.

Plunkett plays cricket, the bat-and-ball sport that is as popular in much of the rest of the world as baseball is in America. He won that World Cup at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, a 208-year-old cathedral of the sport. Plunkett took three wickets — the equivalent of strikeouts — in the title game, including opposing New Zealand’s best player.

A decade or so before that famous day, at a restaurant just down the road from Lord’s, Plunkett was having dinner when he met a Villanova student from West Chester who was studying abroad in London.

In 2018, Emeleah Erb became Plunkett’s wife. Last summer, they moved to America after Plunkett’s last pro contract in England ended.

Plunkett soon learned that he wasn’t just moving to his wife’s hometown. He was moving to a region with America’s richest cricket history.

» READ MORE: As the cradle of cricket in the U.S., Philadelphia has an honored place

Philadelphia’s roots in the sport are so deep that they predate the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Franklin brought a copy of cricket’s rules here in 1754. During the war, George Washington played a version of the game with his troops at Valley Forge in 1778.

Centuries later, Plunkett is part of a group that wants to bring new life to the region’s cricket culture. A forthcoming U.S. pro cricket league, Major League Cricket, launched a minor league last year with a team in the Philadelphia area. Late next month, that team, the Philadelphians, will start its second season.

The team’s ownership is led by cricket aficionados William “Ernie” Precious, an English-born former vice president at the Hunt Manufacturing Company; and Murali Kailashnath, an Indian-American tech entrepreneur who has consulted with companies including Apple, Cisco, Vanguard, and Comcast.

Plunkett, 37, will be a player on the team this summer. He’s also coaching youth players at the Star Sports indoor cricket facility in Warminster, which has a partnership with the new local team.

“We do not consider cricket as a new sport for America,” Kailashnath said. “We think cricket belonged here for ages. ... That was one of the main motivational factors for us to get involved in this and try to see how we can professionalize the sport that we love so much.”

In the 1850s, cricket teams started competing on Haverford College’s campus. There’s still a cricket field there today, and a varsity team that plays on it. A two-story clubhouse has locker rooms upstairs and the C.C. Morris Cricket Library downstairs, richly stocked with photos, books, and artifacts including bats, balls, and uniforms.

Then, of course, there are the Merion Cricket Club, Philadelphia Cricket Club, and Germantown Cricket Club. Some might know those famed institutions better for their golf courses, but they were named for a sport, not an insect.

» READ MORE: The Germantown Cricket Club is a reminder of a sport's, and a legend's, former glory

Teams from Philadelphia traveled the world, and major foreign squads came here to play games. In 1872, an English team headlined by W.G. Grace — cricket’s first superstar — played the city’s top squad, also called The Philadelphians, at the Germantown Cricket Club’s original location in Nicetown.

Grace also frequently welcomed members of the Philadelphians to his home in England. The Morris Library has artifacts of his visit and hostings.

“Philadelphia was playing first-class cricket for an extended period of time from the 1870s to the 1910s,” Morris Library president Paul Hensley said. “We were a cricket power.”

The new local team has resurrected the Philadelphians name. Its home is Exton Park, near Chester County’s booming and affluent South Asian expat community.

“In the past couple of generations, no one would have even heard about cricket — they just probably would have found it more of an expat sport,” Kailashnath said. “We cannot blame people for that. ... There is no other city in this country that is as rich in cricketing history as Philadelphia, and that’s definitely one part which we are very keen on highlighting.”

Plunkett hopes that as he teaches local kids the game he loves, the Philadelphians might “find a bit of gold dust in someone who’s come from baseball or a different sport in America.”

The collective aspiration is for Philadelphia to someday play a part in the major league, potentially including the construction of a true cricket venue in the region; and for the Philadelphians to contribute players to the U.S. national team pool ahead of the United States’ co-hosting of the men’s Twenty20 World Cup in 2024 with nations in the Caribbean.

Twenty20 is the shortest professionally played version of the sport, with games lasting from 2-3 hours. Imagine a baseball game with a set number of pitches thrown. In cricket, that is balls bowled: 20 “overs” per team, to use the official term for a round of six balls each.

The U.S. upset Ireland in that format last December, a result that made headlines around the cricket world.

“There’s always been a pool of talented cricket players in America, who really haven’t been able to play at the highest level, simply because the infrastructure in the sport didn’t go in that direction and allow you to play at an international level,” Hensley said. “I’ve met many people from around the United States who could be playing first-class cricket, and it’s great to see that we’re getting to that point.”

Plunkett sees the same trend.

“The USA are on the right track to compete with the other big teams in the world,” he said.

The Philadelphians’ player development work is already underway. Minor League Cricket requires that each team field two players under age 21 in its lineup, and last year the Philadelphians regularly played five.

There’s also proven talent in two players who have been on significant international stages.

Jeremy Gordon, a 35-year-old fast bowler (akin to a fastball pitcher), has played for Canada’s national team in the 20- and 50-over formats, and played in a pro tournament in Canada in 2019. Jonathan Foo, a 31-year-old batter from Guyana, played in the high-profile Caribbean Premier League in 2016 and ‘17.

» READ MORE: How local cricket fans have tried to keep interest in the sport alive

Now they’ll be joined by someone who’s so famous in the sport that when he visited the Philly area more than a decade ago, he was recognized in a Dunkin’ Donuts by a cricket-loving clerk from India.

“When I learned about the history of cricket in Philadelphia and met some people down at the Merion Cricket Club, it was fascinating to me,” Plunkett said. “All of a sudden I’ve got an opportunity to be here, to help coach, to help put a structure in place over here. ... If someone scripted this to me 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

The Philadelphians are just as amazed.

“I really think he thought we were kidding him,” Precious said of their early discussions. “He must have gone back and done some research, and he was on the phone very quickly saying, ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing, you guys.’ And so it’s a dream come true for both of us, for the team, and for him.”