Coppell High School senior Karthik Gattepalli stands in front of a batsman, then, in one quick motion, bowls the ball towards him. To many, the sport he is playing is unfamiliar, but to Gattepalli, cricket is something he has come to love.

Gattepalli grew up in Australia, a place he describes as “a cricket nation”. He was 8 when he first picked up a bat.

“First it was for fun, then as things went on, I was more passionate for the game,” Gattepalli said. “Things got more competitive as they went, so when I came here, I didn’t expect to see the game here, but I was lucky enough to see people play and also play on a very competitive level.”

When he moved to Irving three years later, he had already established himself as a high level cricket player, joining a team of more experienced cricketers at the Dallas County Cricket Club.

“When he first came here we didn’t really know much about him and we were just kind of learning how to play with him, things like that,” DCCC teammate Aditya Guin said. “Even though he was younger than all of us he kind of established himself as a leader on our team. His approach to cricket was much different than any of us were exposed to.”

From there Gattepalli was invited to play on the USA Under 19 team, made up of members from across the country. The team flies to the cricket capitals of the United States such as California and New York to play together in tournaments.

Dhandapani Devarasan, founder and head coach of Cricketmind at English Indoor Cricket Academy, first met Gattepalli by chance.

“It was an accident because I met him one of the games that I watched closely,” Devarasan said. “Everybody was talking about him. Then I picked him for one of my teams on the Dallas Premiere League.”

Since joining his team, Devarasan has viewed Gattepalli as a quick learner who “is always eager to learn to improve his cricket”.

“[He’s a] cool headed person actually, that is the biggest thing,” Devarasan said. “Cricket is a game like chess, the mind has to be very strong. He adapts to the situation really fast and pays really well.”

While Gattepalli has a passion for the sport, he recognizes it is widely unknown by people in the United States, and has a theory as to why.

“The best way to put it is it’s probably not that they don’t like it, it’s probably just because they only have sports to use,” Gattepalli said. “You have baseball, which is basically the cricket of America. They don’t really need cricket, they don’t really need another sport.”

Another reason classic cricket is not often a spectator sport is the longevity of it, with most games occurring over several days. However, a new format called Twenty20 cricket should solve that problem.

“Here people don’t have that much time, they don’t want to play all day,” Devarasan said. “They prefer to play a shorter version of the game. Now the trend is Twenty20. Twenty20 is like a soccer game, it’s over in three hours. Now it’s getting popular all over the U.S. Now definitely in this new format, it will grow.”

Gattepalli was accepted to the UT-Dallas and UT-Austin, and struggled to decide where to go. Luckily one key factor came into play.

“I debated, then I figured out there was cricket at UTD, that’s one thing that’s really pushed me towards UTD because cricket is my passion, and if there’s cricket, it’s better,” Gattepalli said.

As far as continuing to play competitively in college, there is an upcoming Under 19 World Cup that if his team qualifies for, will put him up against players from Australia, England, India and South Africa.

“Even if I get a [chance to play] one game, that’d probably be a life changing moment for me,” Gattepalli said. “That’s what I’m looking for, and along with that, probably get a few majors under my belt.”

Although Gattepalli will soon move on from CHS to study at UTD’s Naveen Jindal School of Management, he won’t be leaving cricket behind any time soon.

“As a person it has shaped me very differently, uniquely than most people because it’s a new sport, people don’t know it,” Gattepalli said. “You have to be very strong with yourself because I could change course whenever I wanted, I could be like ‘well no one knows this sport, I might as well change this sport’, but I need to be really strong in my core beliefs. I’m glad that I didn’t change.”