Students Revive Dormant Cricket Club

Under the floodlights, Harvard and Yale stood shivering, squaring off against each other like so many teams before them in the schools’ storied past. Only, this wasn’t The Game. Not even close. The stands were empty, save for a handful of friends and family—a generous 15 spectators. And this was the first time the two teams had ever faced each other.

Harvard and Yale have competed for more than two centuries in dozens of sporting events, but never in cricket. Last Saturday the two teams met to play the first cricket Game in history.

The “Founded in 1868” splashed across the back of the Crimson jerseys is misleading; Harvard had a cricket team in the 1800s and competed against other northeastern and Ivy League schools.

The Crimson had extended an invitation to compete against Yale in 1887, but the Bulldogs didn’t have an official cricket team. But formal cricket hasn’t been seen at Harvard since 1927, and the club has remained dormant until only recently. Few people in the university could tell you the rules of cricket, and even fewer still probably know that Harvard now has a cricket club.

The administration only this year recognized the team as a club sport, and the team has only just started competing legitimately against other colleges. The game against Yale was the team’s fifth game—ever.

Despite the team’s infancy and anonymity, the few fans who stuck around until the end of the match witnessed a ferocious drubbing of the Bulldogs at the hands of the fledgling team. The final score-line read 249-72. Even those that know nothing about the sport can grasp that it was a blowout. Comparable to a 15-run rout in baseball, Harvard hit ball after ball over the fences and bowled out Yale in the 14th of 20 overs.

WHAT’S CRICKET, YOU SAY?

The average American could probably tell you very little about the sport of cricket, apart from its similarities to baseball. The parallels between the two are fairly obvious; there’s a batter and a pitcher, there are outs, and there are innings, albeit all with different names. The rules and lingo will sound strange to the uninitiated.

An ‘out’ is a wicket, an ‘inning’ is an over. It’s not called pitching, it’s bowling. Instead of rounding three bases, the batters run between two to rack up points. Hit out of the park and it’s six points, but if it bounces or rolls out of bounds, it’s only four.

A batter can’t get out if they miss a bowl, only if the wicket (three sticks) behind them are knocked over or they are run out; a batter could conceivably bat the entire inning, all twenty overs. In international cricket, innings last hours every day, and test matches last days on end. Match days are always big events, and cricket enthusiasts demonstrate their loyalties by spending entire days at the pitch.

For Americans, it might be hard to conceive of just how popular cricket is in some parts of the globe. In Pakistan, India, Australia, and other British-Empire-influenced areas around the world, the sport is unparalleled in popularity—especially true in South Asia where few other sports are followed. In last year’s Cricket World Cup, an estimated 123 million people tuned in to watch from India alone; that’s more than watched Super Bowl.

“I think it’s difficult to compare to a U.S. sport, because even for someone who’s not interested in sports, you will know when Pakistan is playing a game,” says junior captain Ibrahim Khan, the leader of the revival movement.

“In America, you have cities playing against each other so there’s no national pride. But most competitive cricket is played on an international level, and when your country is playing you will know because everyone will be talking about it.”

That said, cricket fanatics are working on popularizing the sport across the States. The club cricket team this year became the newest member of the newly founded American College Cricket conference. Although the conference was only founded in 2009, it now boasts more than 60 colleges across the United States and Canada, with more being added every year.

“Months of research confirmed for me the game was missing a tremendous opportunity for development by not pursuing an American modus operandi of development—that is, through college competition,” wrote ACC President and founder Lloyd Jodah in an email. “Colleges have provided the grassroots for development of major American sports unlike the rest of the world.”

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Even as early as a year ago, the idea of cricket being a club sport at Harvard was difficult to imagine. Interest in the team was largely limited to international students who understood cricket’s worldwide appeal and had grown up with a passion for the game.

“Here in America, I never thought I’d get the opportunity to play cricket at this level,” said Khan, a native of Pakistan. “I thought we’d be able to play pickup games once or twice a semester.”

But there was enough interest to band together a solid team that was committed to playing cricket on a regular basis. It began almost two years ago with several students gathering on weekends to play with a taped tennis ball on the top floor of the Malkin Athletic Center, all the while working to get cricket approved as a club sport. Much of the team’s early development can be attributed to Khan and the other students’ hard work and perseverance.

“Ibrahim has done an incredible job putting the team together,” freshman Manik Kuchroo said. “Talking with the administration and dealing with all other aspects of the club such as buying equipment and so forth.”

The team now consists of a core of undergraduates as well as some graduate students, all with ties to England and its former colonies. The members are a compilation of differing skill levels and experience. Some have had years of formal cricket competition, such as law student Yaaser Vanderman who played for Cambridge University’s team while studying as an undergraduate. Others grew up playing it after school with friends, such as Khan in Pakistan. The team has no coach and is mainly run by the captain and several of the other upperclassmen.

“I would say there is even more team unity because of the lack of a coach,” Kuchroo said. “We all try to help each other with regards to our technique and push each other to improve. As a freshman I was really welcomed on the team, and I really appreciate that.”

Their team unity and skill is evident in their play. Despite this being the team’s first year, it won its first five games before losing to Boston University by a slim margin last weekend. The game against Yale had several displays of Harvard’s high skill level. Vanderman put on a Pedroia-esque lasershow, scoring almost 100 of his team’s 250 points alone. Kuchroo bowled a “wicket maiden,” bowling an over (six bowls) without giving up a single point and bowling the batter out. The offense averaged more than two points a bowl, and the fielding held Yale to less than 80 points in 84 tries.

“It’s incredible how we’ve clicked so quickly,” Vanderman said. “When you click with your teammates and when you’re having a good time, you play better, and it instills confidence in the whole team. Some of the teams we’ve played also hadn’t been playing together for very long either. The difference between us and them was that they didn’t know each other’s names or look like they were having a good time, and they certainly weren’t playing as a cohesive unit.”

BIGGER, BETTER AND SHINIER THINGS

The Crimson’s record so far has been so stellar that it has already qualified for both regionals and nationals in the ACC, a hugely impressive feat for a team in its freshman year. This weekend, the team heads to New York to play in the Northeast Regionals against the other top college teams from the area. Harvard will play against Boston University, Rutgers, and York College, with the victor coming away with the Northeast crown and a trophy to boot.

Despite the Crimson’s encouraging start, the competition will be much stiffer as Harvard moves up to the big leagues. York currently holds the national title, and BU handed the Crimson its only loss of the season. Harvard is slated for a rematch with BU in the semifinals, and if it can triumph over the Terriers, either Rutgers or the national champions will await it in the finals.

“I am actually very glad we had our first loss before our big weekend coming up,” Khan said in reflection of his team’s performance at BU. “The team was creeping into overconfident territory and needed to regain the desire that had served us so well earlier…. There’s a trophy we’re playing for now and we’re in this to win it.”

No matter the outcome this weekend, the team will be looking ahead to the spring, when it will fly down to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to compete in the ACC Spring Break Championships, the national tournament. Around 30 of the best college cricket teams will be playing on the only international cricket grounds in the United States, batting and bowling for the Shiv Chanderpaul trophy (Chanderpaul is one of the highest cricket scorers of all time).

Thousands of spectators will come to watch the tournament, and the matches will be televised on TV Asia nationwide and overseas. The tournament is one of the biggest cricket events in North America, and is helping to propagate the sport throughout the continent.

“What’s important to me is that cricket is now wearing American and Canadian uniforms,” Jodah wrote in an email. “Practically all the players in American College Cricket are passionate about the game, and when they step on the field they’re representing their colleges. Of course those who grew up playing the game ensure a generally high standard of play.”

For a team that has only just started playing competitively, the escalation in play may be a bit overwhelming. After all, only a few months ago the team was still only on the drawing board.

“It’s been quite an interesting journey from really nothing when I came here,” Khan said. “We now have a proper team. We actually just put in orders for uniforms, it’s all quite exciting.”

Only time will tell as to how Harvard will fare against the challenge. Despite how far the team has come already, Khan is still looking towards the future.

“A good example we see is the [women’s] rugby team, which was formerly a club team, but it was announced this summer that it would become a varsity sport at Harvard,” Khan added. “I think this is a good example for us to follow. If we keep doing well, three or four years down the line, why can’t it become a varsity sport? That’s the ultimate goal.”