Degrees in information technology and physics. A two-year stint with ride-hailing company Lyft Inc. Since 2012, his own photography business.
But what Kavindu Dhanapala really wants to do is play cricket. That led him to his latest venture: opening a training center for that and other sports in a 5,000-square-foot commercial building at the south end of Sacramento’s central city.
“I was working at good companies, but I waited for the weekend to play cricket,” said Dhanapala, who was born in Sri Lanka but has lived in the Sacramento area since he moved here 12 years ago to attend California State University Sacramento. “Why not do it seven days a week?”
Called Pro Strikers, the training center at 2230 16th St. is also set up for training in similar sports, such as baseball and softball. The closest place offering anything similar, Dhanapala said, is in San Jose.
Growing up, Dhanapala said, he began playing cricket as a kid and attended a school known for the sport. After moving to the U.S. for higher education, he played in recreational cricket leagues, but the sport’s relative obscurity here meant a lot of travel to play matches against teams in other cities — no easy feat to balance with work when matches can sometimes go for five days.
While in school, Dhanapala researched astronomy. After school, he spent two years as an operations specialist and community ambassador in the Central Valley with Lyft.
“Tech was fine, but I was more passionate about cricket,” he said. Dhanapala began spending more time on a commercial photography business he’d started in 2012, Fineclicks Studios, to fund what became Pro Strikers.
Ben Dayawansa, a real estate agent and mortgage broker based in Natomas, said he helped Dhanapala by giving him listings for sale to shoot. But Dhanapala’s passion for cricket was what Dayawansa said he remembered.
“He’s a young, energetic entrepreneur,” Dayawansa said. “If you had a deadline for something, he’d stay up until 2 a.m. As long as he can, to get it done.”
The Sacramento region has a number of players who compete in minor cricket leagues, but as Dhanapala said he discovered places to train are hard to find. Most baseball training centers have batting cages about 70 feet long, or 20 feet shorter than the typical distance between bowler and striker in cricket. Pro Strikers has 95-foot cages.
His cricket center also has pitching machines, and the ability to retract three lanes to accommodate indoor cricket or futsal, a form of indoor soccer.
On Nov. 12, he opened his business, honoring the founder of the Davis Cricket Club, which dates to the 1970s.
“Most of the players here have another job, so this facility comes in handy,” he said. “We’re open until 10, and we have people come in at 9.”
Pro Strikers also has a space of 40 by 90 feet for fielding practices, Dhanapala said, and he’s working with local coaches to bring a more professional training environment to the facility, including not just training instruction but fitness and nutrition tips.
Also, Dhanapala said he hopes to start the first indoor cricket league in the region. There are several different types of cricket, but the one that’s the fastest growing is T10 cricket, a shorter version of the multiday variety.
T10 cricket is also great for children, another advantage in making it a point of emphasis for Pro Strikers, he said.
“You have the ability to learn, and even if you don’t play, you learn to be a better person,” Dhanapala said, adding that was his own early experience with the sport. “It helped me build a personality and grow in working with other people.”
Sacramento has eight to 10 cricket pitches, many of them non-standard sizes. Dhanapala’s new center is the only of its kind he knows of locally; there are three in the Bay Area. So there’s room to grow the sport here, he said.
Dhanapala said he believes Pro Strikers could catch a rising wave. Second only to soccer in global popularity, cricket is about to have a professional league in the U.S., and the United States will send a team this year to a World Cup masters tournament, for players 50 years and older, in South Africa.
“For them, this would be a good facility,” he said, adding USA Cricket is working to boost the sport’s profile nationally, signing up donors and establishing academies. The Covid-19 pandemic slowed the momentum, he said, but the long-term goal was to establish high school cricket teams by 2024.
“It’ll be like soccer,” Dhanapala said. “That’s my hope, and the way it’s growing, it’ll be there.”
In the meantime, he said, he’s experiencing the ups and downs of opening a new business. Staffing is a challenge, partly because he’s learning it as he goes, but he’s also benefiting from word of mouth that’s sending more people his way.
“I meet every day a new cricketer,” he said. “We see a ton of traction.”
The Essentials
Kavindu Dhanapala
Owner, Pro Strikers and Fineclicks Studios
Age: 33
Education: Bachelor’s degree in physics with minors in astronomy and math, California State University Sacramento. Master’s degree in information technology, California State University Fullerton
Career: 2012-current, CEO/principal photographer, Fineclicks Studios; 2014-19, director, McLabz Solutions; 2014-16, operations specialist/community associate/ambassador, Lyft Inc.; 2015-current, information technology specialist, California Legislative Data Center; 2016-present, all star host, Turo and Getaround; 2019-current, CEO, Genesis Global Solutions; 2022-current, CEO, Pro Strikers
Personal: Married since 2021
An effective business leader is: “Elon Musk“
Passions: Cricket, astronomy, cars and salsa dancing
Fantasy job: NASA space mission lead
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