How word of the IPL has spread to San Francisco

San Francisco: Indian chefs from Chennai working in San Francisco's Bay Area have combined to form the US city’s only cricket team — and called it the Super Kings.

The group made up largely of chefs from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, many of whom met while in culinary school in Chennai, named their team after the IPL franchise they support.

Because they’re all chefs who don’t work Mondays, playing cricket, a childhood love for many, was an obvious way to spend their day off, according to Mission Local, a project of University of California’s Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

The San Francisco Super Kings were formed in 2009, when Dhiru Paulraj Kumar, a chef at the Dosa restaurant until recently, started playing with other recent immigrants in the area.

Kumar himself recently moved to manage his own restaurant in Philadelphia.

In the larger Bay Area, the Super Kings are not alone. The team plays other groups from San Jose and Sunnyvale, which supports an organised league, the Bay Area Cricket Alliance.