By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications

International Development Studies major Yuvraj Talwar has brought an international perspective (and cricket) to UCLA.

UCLA International Institute, August 13, 2015 — Yuvraj Talwar was one of only a few students from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to begin his undergraduate studies at UCLA in 2012. This fall, in large part due to the enthusiasm of his parents for UCLA, some 30 or so students from the small federation of emirates in the Persian Gulf (known as the “Arabian Gulf” in many Arab countries) will enroll at UCLA. Thanks to Yuvraj, they will have the opportunity to play a beloved sport: cricket (see below).

Bringing a global perspective to campus

Yuvraj and other international students at UCLA bring a global perspective to campus. Although born and raised in Dubai, the soft-spoken UCLA senior is not an Emirati (a citizen of the UAE, a country created in 1971). Ironically, he is perceived in the United States as being “from the UAE” or “from Dubai,” but is considered Indian in the UAE.

It is a fact of life that in many oil-producing countries of the Persian Gulf — particularly Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman — foreigners constitute the majority of the workforce. Sovereignty and national identity are preserved by offering foreigners work visas, but not a pathway to citizenship.

In the UAE, foreign workers represent roughly 80 percent of the population and close to 90 percent of the working population. Dubai, one of the seven emirates, has used this workforce to greatly diversify its economy, investing in considerable infrastructure and building a large financial services sector and booming tourist trade.

When earlier generations of foreign workers came to work in the UAE, they generally retained a sense of identity associated with their home countries. But for Yuvraj and his generation, born and raised there, that sense of identity is more global and multicultural, less national.

“There's a huge mix of people in Dubai,” he says. “My friend group in high school — we all went to a British school, but everyone was not necessarily British. We had people from Thailand, people from Japan, people from China, people from India. . . from Pakistan, America, Singapore. That was just the way it was growing up: you met everyone from all over the world.

“So when I came to the States and experienced the pride [here] — people love being American and that's amazing — it was very strange concept for me to get accustomed to,” he remarks. Asked if he feels that people in the United States are poorly informed about the Middle East, he replies, “[F]rom what people think of the UAE, the information is definitely skewed, but understandably so.

“If I was living somewhere my entire life, I would draw stereotypes about places that I have never been to, so I can understand where it is coming from,” he continues. “I just feel it's my job to tell them what I think it's like, and then it's up to them if they want to continue with the stereotypes.” In fact, he and his American roommates mostly debate politics, with Yuvraj asserting that he has never felt the need to vote.

Cricket comes to UCLA — again

Yuvraj chose UCLA over his other top university choice, University College London, to “get out of his comfort zone.” He enjoys the International Development Studies (IDS) Program because it lets him indulge his passion for economics. “I love economics, but I don't like the mathematics that surround it because I'm not a mathematician. IDS gave me the option to take economic classes and is also very interdisciplinary,” he explains. Although he has focused primarily on regional economics, he has also studied Italian for two years and spent a summer in Italy.

But one essential thing was missing: cricket, his favorite sport. A bat-and-ball game, cricket is played mostly by the member nations of the British Commonweatlh. Although UCLA had a formal cricket club sometime in the 1920s, and has had informal games since, it did not have a formal organization. So Yuvraj created one.

Most Americans are unfamiliar with cricket, in which a game is a “match;” the pitcher, a “bowler;” and a batter, the “batsman” or “striker.” Not to mention that two batsmen are up at the same time, both can score runs simultaneously and their job is to protect their wicket. Considered the most popular sport in the world after soccer in terms of audience size, international competitive cricket is played in matches called “Tests” that last for five days with 10 hours of play a day — a game of endurance and strategy in equal measure. 

 Uni Cricket match, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. (Photo: PJR, 2007; cropped). CC BY-NC 2.0.

To recruit players, Yuvraj said, “I had to give them some sort of anecdotal stories to try to get them to play. And, in fact, I found one: the first-ever international cricket match was in 1844 between Canada and the United States in New York.” Eventually, between 15 and 30 players played regularly for the club in the 2014–15 academic year. It is a reflection of Yuvraj’s enthusiasm and powers of persuasion that some club members learned the sport for the first time.

“Cricket is a patience game,” says Yuvraj, a lifelong player who claims the sport is “nothing other than a religion.” He considers American sports to be “crash-bang-wallop.” He explains, “They are very loud, whereas cricket — especially the traditional game — has never been loud. It’s meant to be a gentleman’s game.”

Which is not to say it can’t be dangerous. The standard cricket ball (hardball) is a bit larger and harder than a baseball and it’s legal to hit the body of the batsman with it. “So you don't want to put someone who isn't confident in that kind of scenario because if you mess up, it can be a bad scene,” explains Yuvraj.

The new UCLA Cricket Club not only fielded a team in the USC Cromwell League last year (an exception to the norm, as the league typically “auctions” players to different teams), they also played a demonstration match organized by the American College Cricket League in Compton against a team from Claremont College in Pomona.

“That was a lot of fun because they have a Compton Cricket Club — they're using ex-gang members and sorting them out through sport,” says Yuvraj. “When we were playing our game . . . the high school baseball kids came to watch us. They were also being cross-trained in cricket,” he said. “And those kids were amazing, they were really, really good. . . . It was a humbling experience — they were great kids; I felt like I was just in another high school.”

As a result of their participation, both Yuvraj and the captain of the newly created Claremont team, Anjaneya Malpani, were named “newcomers of the year” by the ACCL. Coincidentally, Malpani also grew up in Dubai. But perhaps that’s not so surprising after all. Cricket is a major sport there — the emirate has a large South Asian worker population, three professional cricket stadiums and has been the home of the International Cricket Council since 2005.

Despite the knowledge gap about cricket among Americans, Yuvraj is certain that the sport will become popular in the United States. “I think ESPN has had a lot to do with football [soccer] coming to life in the United States in the last 10 years,” he says.” I’d say cricket here is where soccer was 50 years ago.”

Surprisingly, Southern California turns out to have one of the largest and longest-standing cricket communities in the United States. According to the Southern California Cricket Association (www.sccacricket.org), cricket teams were created in Los Angeles in 1888 and in Santa Monica in 1893. And in 1933, four cricket “pitches” were established in Griffith Park. Who knew?

UCLA charms an entire family

Yuvraj has come to love UCLA and California in general, where he appreciates the weather and the laid-back lifestyle. But he’s not the only one in his family who loves the university. His parents have become full-fledged Friends of UCLA, hosting information sessions about the university in Dubai and regularly visiting Los Angeles.

“It all began when we came to drop our son here and [went to] the orientation meeting,” said Lovraj Talwar, managing director of Terrazzo Ltd., a UAE-based firm specializing in construction materials that operates throughout the Gulf and has manufacturing sites in the UAE and India. “We were at a luncheon at which our son happened to be seated right next to Susan Wilbur, [then] director of undergraduate admissions at UCLA.” After the luncheon, Wilbur approached Mr. Talwar (senior) to learn more about his son’s high school and the students who attended it.

Mr. Talwar and his wife Dolly soon invited her to Dubai to visit. “Since then, one thing has led to the other,” he says. “We’ve been holding at least a couple of events a year in our residence in Dubai — first to encourage students to apply and then to choose UCLA over other schools [which have accepted them].”

Reflecting on the transnational identity of his son’s generation, Mr. Talwal said, “The U.S. is slightly different, but the rest of the world — especially where we come from — is a confluence of different cultures from around the world. They really feel very global and international; they do not relate to any one country or any one nationality or citizenship. It doesn't seem to be that important to them.”

“I think UCLA is the right choice for a lot of people from so many different angles — it's a great combination of lots of advantages,” he says. According to him, the academic standing of the university is the least difficult consideration for potential Bruin parents in Dubai. The big challenge is that they initially consider California a world away.

“Most people from our part of the world think of the East Coast, they think the West Coast is too far. But the climate, the whole city of Los Angeles, and the State of California — all of that is so infectious, that you forget everything else,” he remarks. And, he adds, the direct (albeit 15-hour) flight from Dubai to Los Angeles on Emirates Airlines makes it an easy trip.

The championship of UCLA by this gracious couple has clearly had results, with more undergraduate students from UAE admitted for the 2015–16 academic year than ever before. It's likely that some of those same students may be recruited by their son for the UCLA Cricket Club.

Published: Thursday, August 13, 2015