The sign above the entrance of Sports Zone has a picture of Rohit Sharma on it. The sign above the shop next to Sports Zone says Chai Wala Bhai.
At Criczone, the indoor cricket facility at Sports Zone, a coach instructs a batter while giving him throwdowns. "That is the swing you should use, offspinners ko drive maarne ke liye."
Welcome to Mount Roskill, the Auckland suburb that's one of the hubs of an increasingly South Asian cricket city.
How South Asian? Last year, the chairs of Auckland's 16 principal cricket clubs signed a joint letter to electorate Members of Parliament expressing their concern over proposed legislation relating to online gambling. We don't need to get into the ins and outs of that issue, but cast your eye over this paragraph from the letter:
"For the 2024/25 season there were 12,895 registered unique participants across our club network. Of these, approximately 40 per cent of our participants were South Asian [emphasis added] and approximately 35 per cent NZ European, 1,384 were women and girls and around 60 per cent aged 5-13."
More cricketers of South Asian heritage play at club level in Auckland than do any other ethnic group. Neighbourhoods like Mount Roskill are at the heart of the community's cricketing boom.
The last two players of South Asian heritage to debut for New Zealand's men's team, Adithya Ashok and Muhammad Abbas, have strong ties to the suburb, having both played for the Eden Roskill Cricket Club in their junior years. Keith Hay Park, Eden Roskill's home ground, hosts and has hosted - among other things - a Telugu Premier League, a Kerala Premier League, and an annual Tamil Eelam vs Tamil Nadu fixture.
Tarun Nethula, the former New Zealand legspinner who is now the head of Talent and Pathways at Auckland Cricket, also grew up in Mount Roskill. CricZone was born during a conversation he had with his Telugu Premier League team-mate Sreekar Reddy.
At the time, Reddy's son was around five, and was "showing too much interest in cricket". Reddy went to a number of coaches enquiring where he could enrol the boy, but found that most clubs stop all cricketing activity in the winter months.
"That's when I approached Tarun," Reddy says. "He said there's nothing like that in Auckland - no indoor facility for year-round skills development. I don't know whether it's going to work or not, but let's give it a try. That's how we started CricZone.
"We started in June 2023, and first month, we had only like 20 students. Within three months, we reached 50. Within six months, we hit 100. At the moment, we're floating around 160-170. It goes up in the winter months, and I think the highest we have gone is 185."
The players who train at CricZone - who range from 5 to 17 - are overwhelmingly of South Asian background. As are the coaches, among whom is the former New Zealand Under-19s legspinner Rahman Hekmat, who emigrated to Auckland from Afghanistan in his early childhood.
There's an appealingly bare-bones, get-it-done vibe to CricZone, with its synthetic pitches sporting markings that betray their other use as badminton courts. This utilitarian vibe extends to Mount Roskill itself, at least the bits I see on a short walk down Stoddard Road on this gloomy Monday evening.
Stoddard Road is where you come for car repairs, plumbing supplies, and groceries at wholesale prices. And it's full of South Asian businesses that cater to a predominantly South Asian clientele.
There are signs for deals on 5kg bags of basmati rice. There's a sign for Home Made Food that promises "100% veg food cooked by mum not chef". There's a sign for Tasty Food's with a picture of a plate of samosas and that telltale apostrophe. There's a sign for a beauty salon featuring, among other images, one of a pair of intricately hennaed hands.
The menu on the side of a food truck named Wok n Spice has one section for Pakistani Street Eats and another for Desi Chinese Specials. In a strip mall down the road, another establishment gets even more specific, claiming to serve "Bombay Chinese".
Nothing, as we all know, is more representative of a culture than that culture's take on Chinese food. Mount Roskill is as authentically desi as any place can be. I've only been in New Zealand three days, and I'm far from homesick, but I know just where to go should that feeling happen to strike.