What’s that they’re playing? Cricket finds Foothold in the region

Adikoppula is one of the founding members of the Capital District Cricket Association, which was started in 2015 as a way to organize the handful of existing local teams to make it easier to find places and times to play. From four to five hardball teams and six to seven softball teams, the league has doubled to 13 hardball teams and 15 softball teams, for a total of 450-500 players.

Teams play every Saturday during the spring and summer at fields around the region.

Though considered obscure by most Americans, Cricket is the second-most popular sport in the world after soccer. The 2019 Cricket World Cup Drew 1.6 billion viewers, 10 times more than the Super Bowl LVI.

Its especially popular in Southeast Asia.

Back in India, Cricket is more than a sport. To put it in Quotes, its a religion, said Kalyan Kompally, president of the CDCA. Regardless of what country you belong to, no matter what race or ethnicity youre from, you fit in the team.

For immigrants who grew up with Cricket, finding a club in their new country is often high on the to-do list.

As soon as you come here, you want to find that game, Adikoppula said.

The basics of Cricket are relatively simple, especially to anyone familiar with baseball. And like baseball, tension builds throughout the game.

Its the progression of the game that I like. It kind of starts slowly, CDCA member Jaya Ram said. And then at the end, it becomes intense. I guess we kind of got addicted to that intensity.

In Cricket, two batters stand at opposite ends of a 22-yard pitch in front of two wickets analogous to the bases in baseball.

Members of the Fielding team surround the pitch. The bowler, a member of the fielding team similar to a pitcher in baseball, bowls the ball from one end of the pitch toward the batter at the other end. The batter tries to hit the ball and score runs by exchanging places with his counterpart, so batters must always be in pairs.

The fielding side aims to get the batters out through a variety of means, including catching a batted ball before it hits the ground and hitting the wicket with the ball before the batter completes a run.

One of the most important units in Cricket is the over, a group of six bowls. Bowlers cant Bowl two consecutive overs, so teams have to alternate at the position.

The Cricket ball is slightly smaller than a baseball but weighs about a half-ounce more.

Even for experienced players, there’s always something more to learn.

I think the rules are a bit exhausting, I would say, but after all these years, (there are) a few things that I dont know too, Ram said.

In traditional Cricket, called test Cricket, the fielders must get all but one batter out before the innings (ends with s in singular and plural) can end. Because of this rule, test matches can be days long. Imagine how long baseball games could take if Aaron Judge was allowed to hit indefinitely until he was out and then you had to face Giancarlo Stanton.

Now CDCA matches are Twenty20, or T20, a form that limits teams to 20 overs per innings and takes about three hours. One Day Cricket limits teams to 50 overs per innings and is used by the Cricket World Cup.

T20 and One Day Cricket are relatively new additions to a sport that goes back to the 16th century.

One of the earliest Mentions of Cricket in the historical record is in 1548 when a man appeared in court for the crime of playing Cricket on Sunday, said Andrew Hignell, secretary of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians.

Later on, the game became synonymous with what you might call Merrie England. And if you were to think of a typical village green, there’d be a Cricket team, the community coming together, Hignell said.

The spirit of coming together infuses the game to this day.

While we play the game, the enthusiasm we bring, and the kind of food we bring which is one of the most important things we share it all, Kompally said. You see that binding here on the field. Once you’re on the field, the Fraternity is obviously visible.

When the British started colonizing other countries, they took Cricket with them. The first Cricket Clubs in India and the Caribbean date to the early 1700s, even before the first official Cricket rules were published in the sports Sociology Professor Dominic Malcolm.

Today, the Indian Premier League is the second-most valuable sports tournament in terms of value per match, behind only the NFL. Streaming and TV rights to the IPL sold this week for $ 6.2 billion dollars for five years.

Cricket initially caught on in America, too; the first international Cricket match was between the US and Canada in 1844.

Why its Popularity declined is a subject of debate. One common theory is that Cricket wasn’t well-suited to the American character, which preferred a faster game. Another is that Americans grew to prefer baseball to cricket for nationalistic reasons.

Malcolm proposed that Cricket declined because people who played it saw it as something that bonded them together and kept their identity linked to Britain, but they werent interested in making other people play. Theres no attempt to kind of make it popular.

Today, Cricket has between 20 and 40 million fans in the US and is played by more than 200,000 people regularly, estimated USA Cricket development manager Jamie Lloyd.

USA Cricket is working to expand the sport by introducing it to schools and bringing big events to America, including a recent five-country match in Texas and the 2024 Cricket World Cup.

As a general rule, Crickets did a pretty poor job over decades of promoting itself, Lloyd said. We think American fans will absolutely love the sport given an opportunity.

The CDCA is also working to expand the sport in the Capital Region.

We want to push it to the Younger generations as much as possible, to understand the game, start to participate in it, Kompally said.

To that end, Adikoppula, who is also a youth Coordinator for USA Cricket, helped get a state law passed that expanded the states capacity to officially promote Cricket.

He also volunteers with the YMCA and has worked with local schools to introduce Cricket to the PE curriculum.

I think this game has to be more connected to the American children. Just immigrants playing might not be giving the right representation of this global sport, Adikoppula said. Its an international sport, and theres a lot of growth opportunities for any youngster.

Jeanine Millar, K-12 Area Coordinator of the Department of Physical Education and Health for Hudson High School, had been trying to get Cricket into Hudson schools for years before she finally connected with Adikoppula just before the Pandemic.

Our population here is diverse down in the Hudson, she said. And we have so many opportunities to experience other cultures and ways of life. And this was one athletically, from our perspective, that we could help expose students who dont normally see this game from another country, perhaps. Cricket in particular, its a huge worldwide game.

Hudson introduced Cricket this spring, and it was a smashing success. In an end-of-year survey, many students ranked the sport in their top three favorite units.

The kids have received it very well, especially the students who are very familiar with it to begin with. They were thrilled to have it, Millar said.

Anyone interested in playing Cricket can contact the CDCA, no prior knowledge necessary.

We train anyone who wants to get trained, Adikoppula said. Thats the beauty of the sport, right? Its diverse, its welcoming.