Something Wicket This Way Comes : Area Aficionados Uphold Traditions of Game Rooted in Medieval England

Imagine Nolan Ryan taking a running start from second base to the pitcher’s mound before hurling a 90 m.p.h. fastball.

Then try to imagine Pedro Guerrero slapping a single into left field off a pitch that bounces two feet in front of home plate. Guerrero doesn’t run to first base, however, opting to wait for a better hit before rounding the bases.

If you can follow this slightly distorted scenario then you can understand the rudiments of cricket--a sport that originated in 13th-Century England but is alive and well in the San Fernando Valley.

If Ryan ever decided to switch from baseball to cricket, he would be called a bowler instead of a pitcher. He would learn to pitch a yorker or a googly--the equivalent of a screwball pitch in baseball--and play without a glove.

Switching to cricket probably would be difficult for Ryan, or any other baseball player for that matter. While a baseball game may be long and slow-moving, one has never lasted five days. In professional cricket, one game can take a week to finish.

For those who don’t have a week to spare for a game of cricket, the Southern California Cricket Assn., offers an alternative. The 26 teams in the SCCA play expedited seven-hour games that can be completed in one afternoon.

The SCCA, a regional governing body that oversees amateur cricket in Southern California, has 445 members on 13 teams in the Valley.

The majority of the SCCA’s 700 active members live in the Valley and play on weekends at Woodley Park in the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area. They range in age from 18 to 67 and are almost all from such countries as Sri Lanka, India, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Trinidad and Tobago, Pakistan and Jamaica.

Jean Ricardo Wong of Northridge, the president of the SCCA, is a typical Valley cricketer. Wong, 53, was born in Cuba but grew up in Jamaica where he learned to play cricket. He played the sport in school as a youngster, just as youths in the United States play baseball and basketball.

“Wherever the British went, they brought cricket,” Wong said. “That’s how tea drinking became part of the tradition of the game.”

Players stop for a 20-minute tea-and-crumpet break about midway into a game. Tea drinking is even addressed in the official cricket rule book. The section titled “Ground Preparation and Teas” stipulates that the home team must provide the tea.

Preserving the sport’s traditions--from the players’ white flannel garb to the regulation-size leather cricket ball--is an important responsibility of the SCCA.

“There are a lot of unwritten rules and gentlemanly etiquette involved in cricket,” said Robert Hutchinson, captain of the Orange County-based British Dominion Cricket Club.

One unwritten rule is--no arguing with the umpire. You’ll never see an irate bowler kick dirt on a cricket umpire.

“You can argue with the umpire in baseball but not here,” said Dr. Anthony Ernest, an Encino cardiologist. “In cricket, when you’re out you are out.”

Keeping the outs straight in cricket might be difficult because there are nine ways to retire a batsman. Each 11-man team is allowed 10 outs in a regulation game. As it is in baseball, the team with the most runs wins.

Scoring in cricket is not the same as in baseball, however. A bowler attempts to put out the batsman by hitting a wooden wicket--three stumps and two bails that lie across the stumps--positioned just behind the batsman, or in a variety of other ways. A team can score when a batsman hits the ball far enough so that he can exchange position with another batsman standing 66 feet away before the ball is returned to the center of the playing area.

If the rules of cricket sound too confusing, Wong has an analogy that may help the novice cricketer understand the sport.

“The game of cricket is like life itself,” Wong said. “You learn discipline from the game. To be successful in cricket you need application, dedication and discipline. If you don’t have that, you won’t be successful in cricket or in life.”

Wong did not expect to find an active cricket community in the Southland when he immigrated to the United States in 1954. The sport had been played in California since 1881, but it took British actor C. Aubry Smith to popularize the sport. He brought the game to Griffith Park in the 1930s and attracted such regular players as Boris Karloff, Nigel Bruce, Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn to his Hollywood Cricket Club.

Cricket’s popularity started to decline after Smith’s death in 1948, and the sport suffered another blow when the Griffith Park cricket fields were turned into an equestrian center in the 1970s.

The sport survived in the Southland, however, largely because of a growing influx of cricketers from throughout the world.

“L. A. is a real melting pot for cricket players,” Hutchinson said. “L. A. has managed to cultivate cricket to a high degree and maintain it the way it’s supposed to be played.”

The SCCA was formed in 1962 with nine teams. Cricket came to Woodley Park in 1976 when two cricket fields were dedicated. Today, Woodley Park has three cricket fields that are regularly maintained by groundskeepers and members of the SCCA.

Cricket is played on an oval field approximately 150 yards in diameter. The central part of the field--the pitch--is a hard, flat area of 20-by-3 meters that is flattened by a steamroller. The smooth, hard pitch acts as a rebounding surface off which the bowler bounces his pitches toward the batsman.

The fields at Woodley Park are known by Valley-area cricketers for their true, accurate pitch--the way the ball bounces off the grass.

“This is the best place to play cricket,” George Best of British Dominion said. “It’s a true batsman’s wicket.”

The SCCA season runs from April through November with games played on Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 6 p.m. Most cricket players are in their 20s and 30s, but there are also teams for youths and seniors.

Wong is a member of the Golden Oldies Cricket Club, for players age 40 and older. The team, which comprises veteran cricketers form throughout the Valley and California, will compete in its third international cricket festival in September in Brisbane, Australia.

“There is no discrimination in cricket because of a player’s age or size,” Wong said. “But just like in baseball, as you get older the reflexes and eyesight start to go.”

No matter what the age of the cricketer, stamina and a keen understanding of the game are essential.

“If you know the intricacies of the game, it’s not boring,” Ernest said. “You have to understand what’s going on out there between the bowler and the batsman. It’s an ongoing battle.”