Dr. Manoj Thirupal, Founder and Head Coach
Underhill Park, 2021, against the Bellevue Chargers. Northwest Profiles, KSPS Public Television.
The bat his father made
Manoj Thirupal was born and raised in the slums of Chennai, India. As a poor kid, he couldn’t afford a store-bought bat like the other kids. His father made him one out of a piece of wood. It was not the same as the ones in the shops. It was the one he learned on.
His family are Dalit, a word that means broken, the caste India calls untouchable. Manoj has reclaimed it to mean resilient. Untouchability was abolished in law in 1950, but not in practice. It lives on in the mind and the body, making itself again in each generation, like marrow in the bone.
He captained his school team. He was known as “Chennai Express” and “Arrow.” Local clubs in Chennai, with money, grounds and coaches, recruited him because he won them matches, and looked after him for as long as he did. His father’s poverty was visible: no shoes on his feet, worn shorts, the kind of background those clubs did not otherwise take.
What they gave him was real. The rules were never said out loud. Perform, be grateful, and leave the rest of your life outside the gate. He was the poor boy those clubs could point to, and he watched friends dropped the season they stopped performing. Some of those clubs meant it kindly. It worked the same either way.
At sixteen, in 2007, Manoj was called to fast-bowling selection trials at Chepauk, Chennai’s international stadium, alongside roughly 1,500 other hopefuls. Bowling is cricket’s version of pitching. He had never had a coach and had never trained at a club. He taught himself on the street, one ball in his hand, bowling at a wall. He came through to the final five.
He remembers the media watching, and interviewing him on the strength of how he had bowled. The other four congratulated him. When the final list was announced, his name was not on it.
The selection was not always made on the field. Money, caste and connections counted too.
He went home. His family were not surprised, and neither were the neighbours. They were sorry for him, and they all told him the same thing. This was normal. This was how it worked. Nobody was angry.
Manoj Thirupal was born and raised in the slums of Chennai, India. As a poor kid, he couldn’t afford a store-bought bat like the other kids. His father made him one out of a piece of wood. It was not the same as the ones in the shops. It was the one he learned on.
His family are Dalit, a word that means broken, the caste India calls untouchable. Manoj has reclaimed it to mean resilient. Untouchability was abolished in law in 1950, but not in practice. It lives on in the mind and the body, making itself again in each generation, like marrow in the bone.
He captained his school team. He was known as “Chennai Express” and “Arrow.” Local clubs in Chennai, with money, grounds and coaches, recruited him because he won them matches, and looked after him for as long as he did. His father’s poverty was visible: no shoes on his feet, worn shorts, the kind of background those clubs did not otherwise take.
What they gave him was real. The rules were never said out loud. Perform, be grateful, and leave the rest of your life outside the gate. He was the poor boy those clubs could point to, and he watched friends dropped the season they stopped performing. Some of those clubs meant it kindly. It worked the same either way.
At sixteen, in 2007, Manoj was called to fast-bowling selection trials at Chepauk, Chennai’s international stadium, alongside roughly 1,500 other hopefuls. Bowling is cricket’s version of pitching. He had never had a coach and had never trained at a club. He taught himself on the street, one ball in his hand, bowling at a wall. He came through to the final five.
He remembers the media watching, and interviewing him on the strength of how he had bowled. The other four congratulated him. When the final list was announced, his name was not on it.
The selection was not always made on the field. Money, caste and connections counted too.
He went home. His family were not surprised, and neither were the neighbours. They were sorry for him, and they all told him the same thing. This was normal. This was how it worked. Nobody was angry.
International Pepsi Cup, Prague, 2018. Manoj front centre, holding the first bat he ever bought.
He didn’t stop playing
He captained both the undergraduate and graduate teams at Loyola College in Chennai, and played across South India for clubs and for company sides, which in India recruit seriously and play to a high standard. When he came to the US to study, he worked part-time jobs until he had saved enough for his first real cricket bat. He was twenty-eight when he finally purchased the bat his father couldn't afford to buy him.
In 2018 he was invited to join the Czech side as a guest player at the International Pepsi Cup in Prague, a T20 tournament. T20 is cricket's short format, a match in an afternoon. While he was there, the players, their coach and one of the Czech Cricket Union's board members all asked him to stay on for two years, saying it could lead to a place in the national side. He turned it down and came back to his studies in Spokane.
The following year, Mad Dogs Cricket Club of Connecticut, who had faced him in Prague, invited him to join their side at the 2019 tournament, playing as the American entry.
He captained both the undergraduate and graduate teams at Loyola College in Chennai, and played across South India for clubs and for company sides, which in India recruit seriously and play to a high standard. When he came to the US to study, he worked part-time jobs until he had saved enough for his first real cricket bat. He was twenty-eight when he finally purchased the bat his father couldn't afford to buy him.
In 2018 he was invited to join the Czech side as a guest player at the International Pepsi Cup in Prague, a T20 tournament. T20 is cricket's short format, a match in an afternoon. While he was there, the players, their coach and one of the Czech Cricket Union's board members all asked him to stay on for two years, saying it could lead to a place in the national side. He turned it down and came back to his studies in Spokane.
The following year, Mad Dogs Cricket Club of Connecticut, who had faced him in Prague, invited him to join their side at the 2019 tournament, playing as the American entry.
Building it differently in Spokane
Since 2016, Manoj has played forty-over cricket for the Spokane Spartans, the long format, a full day's play, at home in Spokane and away in the Seattle area. In 2023 alone he took five wickets in eight overs in the opening game of the season, half the other side out, and was named Spartan of the match; at the end of the same year he was still batting when the playoff sent the Spartans up a division.
These days he plays when they need him, and spends the rest of his time getting young people in Spokane onto a cricket field.
These days he plays when they need him, and spends the rest of his time getting young people in Spokane onto a cricket field.
Manoj on the left with the ball, Wasil on the right with the bat. Bellevue, 2023.
Walking off after the winning runs in the playoff against the Bellingham Daredevils, 2023.
In 2023, neither Spokane nor WSU had enough players for a full team of eleven in the T20 league. Manoj proposed a collaboration and the two sides became one, the Eastside Chargers, later renamed the Eastside Thunder Hawks. In their first season they finished second in the tournament, out of sixteen teams.
Academy players turning out for the Eastside Thunder Hawks.
The Hawks now draw players from Spokane, Pullman, the Tri-Cities and Idaho, representing eastern Washington in the Northwest Cricket League. They have climbed from Division D to Division B in three seasons. Sides move up and down by results, so that is two promotions won on the field rather than a reassignment.
He founded the Gonzaga Cricket Club, where college students met cricket alongside the baseball they grew up with, and taught Cricket Adventures for the Reardan-Edwall School District, coaching fundamentals from kindergarten through eighth grade. He has taken things back the other way too, bringing baseball’s throwing technique and power hitting into his own game and into how he coaches.
He founded the Gonzaga Cricket Club, where college students met cricket alongside the baseball they grew up with, and taught Cricket Adventures for the Reardan-Edwall School District, coaching fundamentals from kindergarten through eighth grade. He has taken things back the other way too, bringing baseball’s throwing technique and power hitting into his own game and into how he coaches.
At Gonzaga, he teaches organizational behavior, leadership and belonging, and his research is on how caste and other deep social hierarchies live inside organizations and decide who gets to stay. Caste is the name India gives it. Every place has a version. The Jesuit call to go forth and set the world on fire names what he tries to offer these young people.
Manoj has coached refugee, immigrant and local youth since 2022, building a program from what started as informal coaching sessions. What those Chennai clubs wanted was his arm. Nobody here is dropped for not being good enough, and nobody has to arrive good.
Out of that program, five players have gone on to play adult league cricket this season, for the Hawks and the Spokane Spartans. One of them missed part of the season because his work would not release him on Saturdays. He is back, and he coaches here now, around his work.
The rest are training to debut as their own team, the Spokane Otters, with the aim of entering the league in 2027. Seven of the program's players now coach alongside him. The point is a program that stands without him.
Sport becomes a form of healing here: a place to learn, to belong with others, and to be more than what you are good for.
Out of that program, five players have gone on to play adult league cricket this season, for the Hawks and the Spokane Spartans. One of them missed part of the season because his work would not release him on Saturdays. He is back, and he coaches here now, around his work.
The rest are training to debut as their own team, the Spokane Otters, with the aim of entering the league in 2027. Seven of the program's players now coach alongside him. The point is a program that stands without him.
Sport becomes a form of healing here: a place to learn, to belong with others, and to be more than what you are good for.
A session at Underhill Park.
Nobody who coaches here is paid, including the head coach. Seven of the coaches came up through this program as players, and all of them are working or studying alongside it. Paying for their hours is what we are raising money for.