Bat, Ball, and Belonging: My Father’s Field of Dreams

My earliest memory of my father isn’t from a home video or a birthday party—it’s from a dusty patch of grass behind our apartment building in Hayward. He’s standing barefoot on the lawn, holding a taped-up tennis ball in one hand and a cracked cricket bat in the other, trying to teach five-year-old me how to play a proper cover drive.

“Stay grounded,” he said, crouching beside me. “Bat close to the pad. And always follow through.”

I didn’t realize then that he was teaching me more than just cricket.

My name is Sameer Khan. I’m a second-generation Pakistani American, born and raised in the Bay Area. My dad, Arif Khan, came to the U.S. from Karachi in the early 90s. He studied electrical engineering at a community college during the day and delivered pizzas at night. He told me he used to sneak in games of cricket on Sundays in Fremont Central Park—teams of uncles in mismatched jerseys, all chasing memories of matches they used to play back home.

For my dad, cricket wasn’t just a sport. It was a language. A way to stay connected to who he was and where he came from. When he didn’t know how to make small talk with coworkers or explain to bank tellers how to pronounce our last name, cricket was what grounded him.

As I got older, I drifted from the game. School got hectic. Life got louder. I started watching the Warriors, hanging out with friends who had no idea what an LBW was, and I stopped playing on weekends.

But something shifted during a visit to Pakistan two years ago. I was sixteen. My cousins took me to a neighborhood match in Karachi, under makeshift lights strung across rooftops. The crowd was loud, the field uneven, but the energy was electric. I could feel my dad’s childhood in the air. That night, I FaceTimed him from the edge of the pitch.

He didn’t say much. Just smiled and said, “Now you get it.”

That moment stuck with me.

So when my school encouraged us to join Anchors of Belonging, I knew I wanted to tell my dad’s story. Not the one about his engineering job or green card struggles—but the one about how he kept playing cricket, week after week, even when it felt like no one here cared.

We filmed the interview in our garage. He was shy at first, but once I brought out the old bat—the one with the taped handle—his stories started pouring out. About the broken field he used to play on near Sea View. About a friend who lent him spikes before a college match. About how he once bowled out a Canadian expat who underestimated him in a Silicon Valley league game.

What I learned is this: belonging doesn’t always come in grand gestures. Sometimes, it comes in the form of a Saturday match with friends who remind you of home. Or a father teaching his son to play the sport that raised him.

We still play together now. Not every week, but often enough. And every time he tells me to “follow through,” I hear it differently.

Because it’s not just about cricket anymore.

It’s about carrying something forward.