The trouble with cricket is that it is so ineffably British. It’s just that stodgy, over-dressed version of baseball, where men in snow-white padding fuss about on a manicured lawn all mired up in some labyrinthine set of obscure rules and memories of the Grand Empire. Or so it may seem to us uninitiated Yankees.
But drop your provincialism some Saturday morning at 8 a.m., stroll over to West Windsor’s Conover Field, and seize the excitement. Manu Singh, a known medium-fast bowler, stands poised like a waiting heron on the hunt, with ball held high overhead. When the moment is right, in a series of short, powerful, balletic strides, he charges toward the batsman, arm whirling in full-length circles. Manu then leaps and releases the white, hardball-size orb, slamming it into the dust of the pitch a few mere yards from the Sid, the batsman, who, with elbows up and angled, aims his flat bat and tries to connect.
Though the bat is wide, getting good wood is no mean trick. Sid has to react to a ball coming up at him low on the rebound. And speed? Major League pitcher Mike Herrera’s fastest-ever pitched baseball (100.3 mph) is matched exactly by pro cricket bowler Shoaib Akhtar. Yet Sid is a practiced player for the Edison-area-based Challenger XI team. Deftly he angles his bat and sends the ball off amid a scrambling group of Windsor Cricket Club fielders — all local WW-P boys. Now the fun begins.
Sid has sliced a nice infield shot, right between Windsor captain Vineet Anand and Guarav Kumar. Like tennis, cricket batting is more often based on placement, rather than swinging for the fences. The ball bounds toward the outfield (a larger oval of about one-and-a-half football-fields in area,) where the yellow jersey number 99 of team vice captain Bhupinder Bohta moves in carefully to make the play. And though the batsmen’s legs and loins may be protectively padded, the fielders’ fingers are not. No leather mitts soften the golfball-hard, shelled ball as it streaks toward you. “Bhu” snags the catch and hurls it back toward the keeper, Ranjan Tatke, poised by one of the wickets. Ajay Takoo runs in for the back up. All 11 West Windsor players shift into position, readying to tag the wicket (think “base”) and get an out.
As the ball flies, Sid, carrying his bat, sets off at a run, sprinting the 22 yards toward the other end of the “pitch” — that slender strip of grassless track that centers the field of play. Now here’s where the sweet strategy comes into action. Sid has a partner. Yes, a batsman partner. As Sid races toward the opposite end of the pitch, marked by its wicket (more about wickets later), another of his teammates — the second batsman, Ramasch, leaves his batter’s box (crease) and charges toward Sid’s end. The two men must run in concert — exchanging places, trying to get as many back and forths along the pitch to score runs.
Meanwhile, the fielded ball is being relayed in. Sid and Ramasch give signals. Do we go for one more? Can we both make it? Should we stay, or sprint for a double? The fielders, striving to run the batsmen out, try to tag either wicket. Ranjan, catching the relayed ball, moves in rapidly, but Sid makes it first, tapping his bat into the crease surrounding the wicket; Ramasch takes Sid’s signal, stays put at the opposing wicket, and both runners are safe. Two singles — one scored for the Challengers 11. Cheers go up from all corners.
The obvious difference on the cricket pitch is teamwork. You see, the trouble with baseball is that it is so ineffably American. I — a rugged individual baseball batter — armed with nothing more than my big stick, square off against an enemy army of fielders. And I slug that horsehide spheroid with all my god-given might, and I churn my legs to earn as many bases as I alone can grind out against the foe. Then some other guy, recently traded and paid to wear the same shirt as mine, gets his chance. ‘Tis exactly the appropriate version of the bat-and-ball sport for a nation of lone (and more than a little self-absorbed) pioneers fighting their way in the wilderness.
However, if I were a human resource manager looking for some fun corporate team-building exercise, I might just swap the softball field for the cricket pitch. A cricket match is a deliberately engineered group-coordination effort. The kind of stuff that neglects stars and builds empires.
Yes, the equipment seems a bit ungainly. At each end of the 22-yard cricket pitch stands this silly-looking wicket thing — a wooden assembly or three upright, 28-inch stakes (called stumps), topped by two, four-and-a-half-inch long, thumb-thick crosspieces, called bails. Unlike NFL goal posts that demand a legion of crazed fans to be torn down, the wicket is purposely frail. It presents a strike zone to the bowler.
When Manu hurls his ball towards the batsman, he is actually aiming at this 28 x 8 inch assembly. If he slips the ball past the batsman and strikes the wicket, knocking over the bail, the batter is out. Thus the batsman is not only trying to slam out a run or two, he is also defending his time at bat, by protecting his wicket from the bowler’s pitch. That’s why Sid, responding to one particular bowl, merely deflects the pitched ball from the wicket, and opts not to run out this piddling dribble; and, as with a fouled baseball, the game simply resumes. No harm, no foul.
Today’s match between the Windsor Cricket Club and the Challengers XI is one of two games played each seasonal Saturday by the five-team All American Cricket League. (Visit www.allamericancricketleague.org and learn about the matches of the Windsor CC, Challengers XI, Xoriant, BNYCC, and the Traditions.) West Windsor’s own Vineet Anand founded the league about a year ago shortly after launching the local West Windsor Cricket Association, in an attempt to bring more of the local clubs together. Currently, an estimated 120 million players actively take to the cricket pitch, making it second only to soccer in number of participants.
“When I was growing up in Delhi, India, you could either go out and play cricket, or sit and watch the traffic go by,” explains Anand. “It’s just what we all did.” Anand’s father, a corporate executive, played team matches with gentlemen of all levels. And while his mother, a teacher, only enjoyed from the sidelines, today she might join one of the growing number of women’s teams.
Like most sports, history leaves only tantalizing wisps as to cricket’s origin. The name derives from the Old Dutch word for “staff,” and game historians still debate about whether the Saxons or Normans first bowled the pastime into Merry Old England. Yet the fun became quickly infectious around all the Indian subcontinent and the entire British Commonwealth. From the early 19th century, it became like shooting hoops in the U.S. — pick up games flourishing in every available open lot. During my visits to India, I would watch anywhere from two to twenty fellows, with nothing more than bat and ball, set down two stones as wickets and begin bowling away.
Their euphoric screams even enticed this writer to give the game a try in Kerala, India. Residents there explained to me that unlike the dry, hard grounds of Delhi, the wetter soils of Kerala often made for damp, softer pitches, with the resulting tacky soils creating, as they say, many sticky wickets.
When Anand decided to head for America in 1997, he brought his Ghandi International Institute MBA, and his cricket bat with him. The former led him to work as an IT consultant, creating the Bank of America’s new financial platforms, the latter brought his youthful joy into his new homeland. It did not take long for him to find many expatriate lovers of his favorite sport.
With all this interest, cricket continues its steady invasion into the world of Garden State sport. The All American Cricket League stands surrounded by other groups in South Brunswick, Lawrenceville, and Princeton. Most of the men like Manu, Jay, Sid, and Bhupinder are hard-laboring gentlemen with lives devoted to families and professions. The legendary lengthy competitions that have won cricket the reputation of “the world’s longest sport” have been abridged to a working-person’s reality.
True, the five-day cricket matches still exist at the rarefied professional level. They are reflective of those times when England’s noble and exquisitely idle one-percent ruled the pitches. Gentlemen with muttonchops and aristocratic bearing, clad completely in white linen uniforms and pads, would stroll manfully onto the manicured lawns. All the finest in their finest would turn out to see and be seen. The specially marked cherry-red ball would fly across the pitch for seven or eight-hour periods each day. Breaks were taken for tea and, toward evening, champagne. ‘Twas an event worthy of the accompanying elegance.
Today the fun is compressed into the Twenty20 style of match. This one-day cricket, adopted by the All Americans and most other leagues, involves a set of 20 “overs” (at bats) for each team. After the bowler has delivered six balls to one batsman (baring a few exceptions), the umpire raises his arms and cries that this batsman’s turn is, “over.” Each team takes all its 20 overs (at bats) successively forming one inning. Then the other team comes to bat with its 20-over inning. This will allow the 8 a.m. game to wrap up sometime around 11:30 a.m., before the heat of the noonday sun, after which only mad dogs and Englishmen play.
For the Windsor/Challenger XI match, Windsor won the toss and elected to field. Captain Anand’s strategy is to keep captain Jay Jillella and his Challengers XI wearing themselves out at the start, hustling for singles, and have them take the field a little fatigued. This will afford Windsor the opportunity to make more double runs. And hopefully, with the emotional, end-of-game edge, Windsor batsmen will feel more likely to slam home some “fours” (a four-run score gained by a hit that bounces past the outfield boundary) or even a “six” (a high fly over the Conover Road fence.)
By the end of the first inning, things are going well. Windsor’s Bhupinder and Guarav, taking their turns as bowlers, have retired the powerful Sid and Khelan. Windsor fielders have held the Challengers XI to an inning of only 94 runs, involving only two fours, and no sixes. It’s been an action-packed, yet modest performance. (Remember, each 22-yard exchange of runners scores one run.)
As the sides exchange, and the red jerseys of the Challengers fan out into fielding positions on the oval field, the Windsor boys strap on their batting-pad leggings brimming with confidence. (Yes, batsmen actually do run with these pads on.)
Early in the Windsor inning, Ramesh knocks home a four and several doubles follow. Windsor’s sturdy batsmen have started off their inning powerfully, but it remains a nail-biter the entire way. As the sun climbs higher and the match dwindles into the final overs, it’s still anybody’s game. Within the last minutes, a quick exchange of a mere single sends Anand’s Windsor Cricket Club on to a squeaky one-point victory — 95 to 94. Gentlemen, very well played.
When this writer’s busted shoulder heals, I might just take up Vineet’s invitation to come try my hand at a few overs on the pitch. It might be fun for the West Windsor Cricket Club to have at least one pasty-faced player of English extraction blundering around the pitch. There must, after all, always be an England.
All American Cricket League, www.allamericancricketleague.org.
