Stars, Stripes and Stumps
The men behind the men
Cricket is not alien to thankless jobs
Chuckworthy
25-Feb-2013
The cream of the cricketing crop was put to the polish at Florida a few weekends ago and as the husk settled, a rather unexpected hybrid strain has emerged as the most resilient one. Now that crop must be honed and separated in the lab that will be the selection camp later this month, a necessary step before the forthcoming export to Eastern pastures. There seems to have been a conscious effort, this time, to keep middle-aged men from the middle. “Forty-plus” might be a good batting average, but makes for a rather uninspiring team aver-age.
Some would say that better sense has prevailed. Others would say “better sense better prevail”. Better sense prevails more often than not at ground levels of US cricket.
In the land of the Prairies, everything short of the nationals is grassroots cricket; some of that grass grows into bamboo or sugar cane. Such grass also lends umpires like me the occasional high of officiating in a match that involves Cameron Cuffy, Jermaine Lawson and Adam Stanford. But understandably, a lot of the organisational responsibilities in such a set-up fall upon the clubs themselves. Who is to organise the grounds? Who buys the balls? Who goes to the league meetings? Who buys lunch during match days? “Don’t look at me!”
In most cases, it is the person who even thought of these questions that gets laden with the chores contained within. The allure of being selected in the playing XI moves others into “gettin’ it done”. And then there are the guys who at first seem like masochists, but when you look beyond the sweat and blood, you find they are just irrational lovers of the sport. They just want to have some cricket played on their watch. These are the men that run US cricket.
Full postLessons on the cricket field
Perhaps the player one learnt the most from at the National championship was former West Indies Test cricketer Neil McGarrell, the captain of the Atlantic Region
Samarth Shah
25-Feb-2013
And so the Northwest Region won the national championship. It wasn't ideal, what with one of the three games being decided in our favour back at the hotel after being interrupted by bad light, and another being rained out. But we'll take it. Rank underdogs, seeded fourth out of the four qualifying teams, the only team with no former first-class cricketers in its ranks, perhaps deserved a bit of luck on its way to making history. According to those who know some USA cricket history, it was the first time ever that either of the west coast teams had won the national championship. My team comprises Cisco, IBM, Microsoft employees, and assorted Silicon Valley geeks, who would take out the smartphones on the morning of games and look up our opponents' first-class averages on Cricinfo.
I was extremely impressed though by the grace shown by the other sides, in what was a desperately unlucky weekend for them. Class on the field is commonly on display at these national level tournaments, and I frequently pinch myself to make sure that I really am playing cricket amid such talent. But the camaraderie and class shown off the field was doubly impressive. For example, there were no unseemly protests or remonstrations with the umpires, from the Atlantic Region, when our game was called off due to bad light, even though neither team had complained about the light. The game was later awarded to us, since we were ahead narrowly on both run-rate and by Duckworth-Lewis. (What those metrics didn't account for was that Atlantic had just taken 16 off a single over; thus momentum was with them.) Even with so much at stake, the umpires' decision was taken in stride: ill-luck being part of the game and all.
Perhaps the player one learnt the most from at the national championship was former West Indies Test cricketer Neil McGarrell, the captain of the Atlantic Region. On the field while bowling, batting, fielding, or just rallying his side through sheer composure, he was a sight to behold. Strangely, no tournament MVP [most valuable player] was awarded, but he was the MVP, for all my money. I will tell my grandkids that I faced two Test bowlers in tandem (McGarrell and Jermaine Lawson), and later, also caused a few problems for McGarrell, when I bowled to him. The Southwest Region led by Mehul Dave also seemed to harbour no rancour that their shot at the national championship was washed away in the rain on the final day.
Full postIs Mitchell Johnson cricket's Rick Ankiel?
I often sit in front of my computer, watching the cricket streaming over the internet and wonder whom these players would be equivalent to, in American sports
Peter Della Penna
25-Feb-2013
I often sit in front of my computer, watching the cricket streaming over the internet and wonder whom these players would be equivalent to, in American sports. Generally I try to think of athletes in positive comparisons. For example, Virender Sehwag is like Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings. If you are drafting a fantasy team in either sport, both players stand a good chance of being the No. 1 pick because of their ability to steamroll the opposition in devastating fashion, piling up yard after yard in Peterson’s case and run after run in Sehwag’s.
However, when I saw Mitchell Johnson’s massive wide bowled down the leg side to Jonathan Trott in the morning session on day five at the Gabba, there was only one player who popped into my mind. I was horrified when I arrived at the realisation that Johnson is turning into cricket’s version of Rick Ankiel.
“I don’t think it hit a crack. We’ll have a look at that,” Bill Lawry said on Channel 9, searching for a reasonable explanation as to how a ball could have been bowled that badly by someone who was the ICC Player of the Year in 2009. Perhaps Lawry was living in denial for the first four days as to how bad Johnson has been at the Gabba. But a few moments later when the replay was shown, reality started to fully set in for him. “Around the wicket he goes. Where does it pitch? Oh no, that’s one of the worst I’ve ever seen! That’s a shocker!”
Full postGiving thanks to Warney
It’s hard not to think that when Warney retired from Test cricket, the spirit of Australia’s team left with him
Peter Della Penna
25-Feb-2013
As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, families across the country gather together and sit down at the dinner table to carve up a giant turkey served with gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, cornbread and all sorts of other fixings. It’s the one day of the year where no one has to apologize for stuffing their faces non-stop before passing out on the couch with a tryptophan-induced food coma.
One of the other Thanksgiving traditions is watching football. Growing up, I used to go with my father and brothers to the local high school football game in the morning and freeze my butt off while sitting on the steel bleachers. We’d come home in time to turn on the TV to watch the Dallas Cowboys or the Detroit Lions play an annual Turkey Day match-up in the NFL.
But now a new Thanksgiving tradition exists that takes place once every four years. While my mom was in the middle of cooking the Thanksgiving turkey, I asked her what time we planned to eat. “I dunno,” she said.
Full postSeason ball to ball season
It would seem natural, that when those observers arrive on the US shores, they pounce on the chance to drive the seasoned ball to the boundary or grab the opportunity to swing it away from the batsmen
Chuckworthy
25-Feb-2013
USA’s premier cricket tournament, the USA Cricket Association’s (not so fondly known as USACA) ‘2010 Senior Nationals’ has just concluded. The tournament serves as a sieve that separates the star-spangled trousers from the spar-strangled diapers. Ignorance adorns the guise of passion, and negligence, administration, during a lot of this tournament with pure talent punctuating it at vital moments. The mug shots for USA’s team page for the next round of the ICC’s World Cricket League (WCL) emerge from this extended weekend. And yet, a vast majority of the weekend transformers from the summer couldn’t be bothered to take note.
This dichotomy seems predetermined when you know that a lot of the league cricketers in the USA hadn’t even played cricket with the “seasoned ball” – a term sometimes used on the subcontinent to refer to the iconic “red cherry” – before they arrived here. It is a privilege to play cricket in whites with a 5.5-ouncer and all the gear that it demands in most countries from which these cricketers come. From my experience growing up in Bombay and Madras, the well-established leagues, highly organised clubs, abundance of high quality talent and scarcity of pitches represented a significant entry barrier to a lot of the observers of the sport if they wanted to experience playing a “proper” season-ball cricket match.
They come to the land of opportunity and … voila! They now have access to public parks, facilities, money and equipment. They can play season-ball matches, weekend after weekend, leaving cricket widows and orphans in their wake. The “parks and recreations” departments in most municipalities provide their residents with access to these grounds. In many cases, they will even throw in permits and create and maintain pitches and outfields.
In at least one example, in the state of New Jersey, the local government has actually built a nice cricket ground, complete with a pitch in the middle of it and pylons of flood lights all around to facilitate night cricket. It is another matter that in their eagerness to serve their residents, they threw in some “sod”, late in the fall of 2009, hoping it would take root and eventually mend the undulations in the bowlers’ run-ups before the beginning of the next ball season. But the next ball-season came; the grass never took root and the bowler’s heels would keep throwing up huge chunks of green and brown stuff into the air, mostly into the face of … well … my face, actually! “No Baa..sffpppfssss” … “tspppfff” … “sppf.” But I die-grass. How many members of the dozens of clubs who enjoy the luxury of playing night cricket on this ground can claim to have even imagined doing so “back home”? The closest they’ve probably been to doing so is at some “tennis-ball” or “tape-ball” night tournament that they went to watch because it was happening near their home and the noise wasn’t allowing them to sleep anyway.
Full postCross-border cricket
There are several advantages and disadvantages to playing cricket in Seattle
Samarth Shah
25-Feb-2013
There are several advantages and disadvantages to playing cricket in Seattle. Obviously the weather - cold and rainy for a major part of the year - is a major drawback. The fact that it is a small city, with fewer players and teams, works both ways. The Northwest Cricket League has 19 teams. It's easier to get recognized in Seattle, as opposed to Chicago or the San Francisco Bay Area, where there are multiple leagues, each with 30-40 teams. There's also a shade less politics than in these big cities.
Then again, summoning financial clout and initiative in such a small cricket community is harder, so facilities are worse. The weather makes grounds harder to maintain as it is. Even indoor facilities aren't that great, compared to Chicago or the Bay Area. I had the pleasure last weekend of training at the Cricket Strike Zone indoor nets in Union City, California. An awesome facility, with excellent pitches, space for bowlers' run-ups, and actual cricket bowling machines imported from Australia. If we had one of those in Seattle, I would try to convince my wife that we should leave our apartment and just move into it.
One of the perks of being a cricketer in Seattle, however, is the opportunity to play in its sister city, Vancouver, Canada. Seattle is less than two hours drive from the US-Canada border, and Vancouver just an hour further north from there. There is actually a long history of players traveling across the border, in both directions, for a day trip involving a cricket game. Some players in fact, have been doing it not once or twice a season, but week in and week out, year after year. It must be a fairly unique phenomenon in club cricket, to play in two different nations, every weekend for years on end. A poor man's version of international cricket. I did it for the first time this year, turning my wallet into a mish-mash of American and Canadian currency.
Seattle Cricket Club, the oldest club in Seattle, actually fields a team in the British Columbia Mainland Cricket League (BCMCL) in Vancouver, in addition to its teams in the Northwest Cricket League. Centurions - the team I play for in Vancouver - are also a mixture of American and Canadian residents. In return, we often have star players from Vancouver come down to Seattle to play. Just this year, we had Canadian national team members Jimmy Hansra and JJ Dawood play in the Northwest Cricket League. The latter in fact, has been a regular here in Seattle, since 2005. Meraloma Athletic Club, the BCMCL champions featuring a slew of Canadian national players, have toured Seattle in the past.
Full post10 reasons I hate the IPL aka ‘the America effect’
By Gregory Uzelac
Cricinfo
25-Feb-2013
By Gregory Uzelac
Here are 10 reasons I hate the IPL:
10. I don’t need to see Warney attempt to relive his glory days on the pitch in between commercials that feature him and Adam Gilchrist speaking atrocious Hindi.
9. It makes ‘sixes’ boring.
8. Anil Kumble bowling some random under-19 player isn’t my idea of fierce competition.
7. Politics play too much of a role (aka “give me Pakistani players!”).
6. I’m tired of thinking the Mumbai Indians are the Mumbai Mastercards.
5. Cheerleaders at a cricket match? I love the ladies, but really?
4. The fact that the Tamils I know root for Delhi Daredevils and my friends from Uttar Pradesh are die-hard Chennai Superkings supporters.
3. Corruption.
2. What the hell is a Knightrider?
1. It’s not cricket!
Full postWatching cricket in the USA is a scramble
It was recently reported that a deal between Neo Cricket and Comcast means that cricket will now be available on cable in the USA
Samarth Shah
25-Feb-2013
It was recently reported that a deal between Neo Cricket and Comcast means that cricket will now be available on cable in the USA. This is exciting news, of course, but it prompted me to think about the trials and tribulations involved in getting to watch international cricket in the US, in the past.
When I left India to come to the USA for graduate studies in 1998, I had no idea when next I would be able to watch a cricket match live on television. In India of course, every high profile series from anywhere in the world is telecast live on cable. Happily for me though, Mick Jagger came to my rescue. His internet media company Jagged Internetworks had just begun covering international cricket, and I watched the sheer miracle of live video streaming of Sachin Tendulkar's 141 and 4/38 vs. Australia at Dhaka. It was the first cricket game I saw live since arriving in the US. I have never been more grateful for Mick Jagger than I was then, not even when I first heard “Ruby Tuesday”. I can still remember sitting all night in front of a high-end PC with three friends in an empty programming lab, turning the volume way up, and celebrating each and every Tendulkar boundary.
Watching cricket live was a novelty when I got here, but for those who got here before the world wide web (WWW) took off, just obtaining scores in real-time was difficult. There was obviously no Cricinfo or any of the other websites that provide live commentary and scorecards. Scores for high-profile games were obtained via internet relay chat (IRC), by asking someone in the chat room from somewhere in Asia, Australia, or England, who also happened to be watching the game. Scorecards for international matches were distributed via file transfer protocol (FTP) and Gopher in the years preceding the web browser. Scorecards for lower-profile domestic games could be obtained after the season was over, from someone who went back to India or Australia for a vacation.
Full postAmerica's most exclusive cricket club
Every now and then, I get an e-mail from someone asking me to write an article about their club
Peter Della Penna
25-Feb-2013
Every now and then, I get an e-mail from someone asking me to write an article about their club. Some of the requests are for clubs that actually have fascinating stories associated with them. Then there are others that just make me scratch my head and wonder why they think their club is actually unique. And then there is the fascinating e-mail that made me scratch my head as I wondered whether the club cricket culture in America will ever truly change.
I received a message in my inbox some time ago with the subject line “US Tigers.” This wasn’t the Greenville Tigers or the South Carolina Tigers. This club was named to represent all of America. The US Tigers. “Hmmm…” I thought to myself, “How could a team with such a name have fallen below the radar for so long?”
So I opened the message to learn more about the US Tigers.
“Our players are from all over the US and have extremely good credentials in their respective leagues,” wrote Sunju Patel, the captain of the team. “Our goal is to create a private club and participate in all competitive cricket tournaments in US and Canada.” He went on to say how amazing their spirit is, how professional they are and how much they spur each other on by constantly staying in touch with each other despite wherever they are living around the country. He then asked if it would be possible for US Tigers to compete as a team in USA Cricket Association tournaments and if I would help promote their cause.
Full postPassion for cricket: a liberator or dictator?
The cricket season in the Northern half of the Eastern sea board is wrapping up for the decade
Chuckworthy
25-Feb-2013
The cricket season in the Northern half of the Eastern sea board is wrapping up for the decade. The weekend transformers will eschew their alter egos for the next several months even as a select(ed) few prepare for the National tournament in what will continue to be a sunny Florida. This also marks the time of the year when my umpiring skills only have my internet connection to fall back on for any sort of improvement, what with the international cricket season beckoning from the Southern hemisphere.
In other words, I spent the first full weekend with my wife since the sprouts that now lay on the ground as fallen leaves first appeared. Did anyone say “withdrawal symptoms”?
Cricket can’t be completely shunted into oblivion in a matter of one or two weekends. It has merely been relegated to a lower priority.
Full post