Cross-border cricket

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.

A typical journey to Vancouver begins early in the morning with a picture-perfect drive, the blue of the Pacific Ocean to the west and the lush green of the Cascade Mountains to the east. We carpool, holding steaming cups of coffee (we're Seattle-ites!), with music blaring. We stop for breakfast just before we cross the border, since the one thing my teammates fear more than anything else is being stuck in a queue at the check-point on an empty stomach. One always hopes the border crossing is uneventful, but it rarely is. Inevitably, someone's passport looks seedy, or one of the players can't recall who we're playing against and on which ground, when asked by the border agent. "You can keep him here, we'll pick him up on our way back," someone jokes, to ease the tension, followed by nervous laughter on both sides of the bullet-proof glass. We usually buy a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of alcohol at the duty-free shop at the border, as a present for our hosts in Canada, what with taxes being higher up there.

The grounds in Vancouver are usually better than those in Seattle, but about once a season, you'll find one cow-pasture that hasn't been visited by a cow in years. Playing in Vancouver is a different sort of challenge. I see it as a sort of a semi-representative game. One has to represent Seattle well. After all, not everyone in Seattle gets invited over. But it's still just a club game.

Like the grounds, the teams in the BCMCL are more varied as well. There are Punjabi-, Sri Lankan-, Pakistani-, and West Indian-dominated teams, like in other leagues all over the USA and Canada. Everywhere in North America, each ethnic team has its own unique style of play, and also its own unique off-field culture. A south Indian team I played against in Springfield, Illinois, would always serve curd (yoghurt) and rice with pickled vegetables for lunch, while Pakistanis from Chicago, would serve you mirchi-ka-salan (a kind of stuffed chili curry). A Guyanese team would speak with the most charming accent there exists in cricket, and the Jamaican team will insist on playing with music booming from outside the ground.

At the top of the BCMCL standings, though, are Meraloma and Richmond, both extremely professional outfits. Meraloma is a side with a bunch of Australian expats, rare in club cricket in the US, since most expats here are from Asia or the Caribbean. It is a team that values method over instinct, and has honed that method through hours of practice. Lunch at the Meraloma clubhouse was scrumptious sandwiches, tea, and... wait for it... actual, real, bonafide chocolate cake! The umpires are invited too, of course, which meant that none of the LBWs that day went in my favor.

Vancouver itself is a lovely, multi-cultural city. Like San Francisco, it is a heady confluence of climate, scenery, urban architecture, and friendly people. The vibrant social and cultural scene means that players can take their wives over and spend the whole weekend in Vancouver, if there isn't a game in Seattle that same weekend. A day of cricket for him, a day of sight-seeing and shopping on Robson Street for her. There are enough cuisines and dining options to make one's head spin. All in all, the best international tour a club cricketer can hope for.

P.S.: My condolences to the Midwest Cricket Conference league in Chicago, about whom I wrote previously. They lost one of their long-time members, a top-class all-rounder and ever-smiling, fun-loving, person named Tushar Mehta, to throat cancer this week.