Locals in Melbourne’s east are furious after a group of Indian cricketers ripped up a football ground so they could play on the pitch beneath it, and say selfish subcontinental teams are causing similar issues across Victoria.
Several members of a winter cricket team made up mainly of Indians were caught on camera scraping soil off the surface of Cheong Park in Croydon South on Sunday, causing an estimated $8,000 in damage.
Eastern Football Netball League (EFNL) Premier Division football club South Croydon has been left without a ground as a result, and senior coach Brendan Allen told the Herald Sun the same thing was happening all over Melbourne.
“The cricket pitch gets covered for football season with a different layer of grass … and they’ve decided they need a ground to play cricket and ripped the cover off and destroyed it,” Mr Allen said.
A former EFNL official told Noticer News that Indian teams damaging local grounds while playing rogue competitions was a “known issue” that had worsened since the Covid period, but said local clubs were afraid of being called racist if they reported it.
“Most of these impromptu T20 comps are not sanctioned by Cricket Victoria or any other bodies, they won’t do anything about it anyway. They either don’t book the ground through the council, or the council just doesn’t care,” he said, adding that the problem was particularly bad in the western suburbs.
“These Indian groups just turn up, and do whatever they want to the oval and use the facilities without permission or with regard to anyone else. The turf is often trashed, there is rubbish left everywhere.
“Some of the outer suburban grounds they even drive their cars across, with no regard for anyone else and the smaller clubs have to pay more for the upkeep. These community clubs barely survive as is.”
The veteran official said it was a “nightmare” for football clubs to find alternate grounds mid-season, and that repairs left them thousands of dollars out of pocket with no way to recoup the money.
“Everyone knows it’s Indians and Sri Lankans doing it but everyone’s afraid of being called a racist instead of actually confronting the problem,” he said.
“Cricket and football are part of the national cultural identity and they’re now both being destroyed in Melbourne by an imported group and none of us asked for it.”
Victoria is home to Australia’s largest Indian population, and Singh is now the most common baby surname in the state, with Nguyen, Kaur, Smith, Ali, and Patel taking the next five spots.
At the time of the 2021 Census there were 272,250 Indian immigrants living in Victoria, 4.2% of the state’s population and 5.1% of Melbourne’s, and another 120,000 people in Victoria had Indian ancestry.
By June 2024 the number of Indians in Australia has grown by about 130,000 to 916,330, and they remain the fastest-growing immigrant group.
