Bat Masters

For weeks, the buzz at Sri Lankan Delight, a grocery in Reseda that caters to the estimated 5,000 Sri Lankans in the Southland, has been cricket, cricket, cricket.

Tucked into a nondescript mini-mall, the shop is the place to go for all the things that speak of home to immigrants from the former Ceylon. It is where you will find Sri Lankan spices, dried fish chips and canned breadfruit, the pesky carbohydrate that sparked the mutiny aboard the H.M.S. Bounty.

But the talk at Sri Lankan Delight hasn’t been about food. It’s been about the visit this weekend of the world champion Sri Lankan national cricket team, a visit that has galvanized both the immigrant community and the city’s little-known but vibrant cricket culture, centered, of all places, here in Van Nuys.

For months, the Valley has been planning for a visit by the Sri Lankan national cricket team, one of the powerhouses in the once upper-class British game, now a sport second only to soccer in international popularity.

Then, a month ago in Lahore, Pakistan, something happened to turn the Sri Lankan arrival last week into a triumphal visit. On March 17, Sri Lanka amazed the sports world by beating the favorite, Australia, to win the World Cup in cricket. The upset victory made national heroes of the 11-man team and international superstars of captain Arjuna Ranatunga and opening batsman Sanath Jayasuriya, named most valuable player of the series.

“This is the biggest achievement since Sri Lanka was born 2,500 years ago,” said Ahamed Sahill, 32, an investment banker and avid cricket fan who was born in Sri Lanka and now lives in Granada Hills. The only other national victory that comes close, said Sahill, was Sri Lanka’s winning the world championship in billiards in the 1970s.

In Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, fans celebrated the cricket title for a week. As Philip Fernando, editor in chief of the Los Angeles-based Lanka Tribune, explained, “For us to win the World Cup, it’s as if the Angels won the world cup in baseball and beat the Atlanta Braves resoundingly.”

In the Valley, the visit of the Sri Lankan superstars and their appearances in matches in Van Nuys are a major boost for local cricket. As enthusiasts point out, cricket in Los Angeles centers on the three public grounds in Van Nuys’ Woodley Park (two more are to be added). Locally, cricket was once a favorite game of movie stars, including Erroll Flynn, Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone. Today, about 600 people play regularly at Saturday and Sunday games in Woodley Park, including 12 clubs affiliated with the Southern California Cricket Assn., according to Krish Sharma, the association’s president.

Unlike the Sri Lankan team, which is professional, local players such as Sahill tend to play a lower-key version of the game. “It’s not as serious as in Colombo,” Sahill said. “I play Sunday cricket here.” Socializing afterward is an important element of the experience. “We try to have some fun,” he said. “We drink some beers. We talk about old times.”

One way to tell the pros from the amateurs is by their dress. The professionals often play something called “pajama cricket” because of their brightly colored uniforms, often emblazoned with the names of sponsors (Singer, the sewing machine people, back the Sri Lankan team). Local amateur clubs favor the time-honored white pants and open-necked shirts.

Los Angeles’ first cricket fields opened in Griffith Park in the early 1930s. Col. Griffith J. Griffith, the Welshman who gave the park to the city, insisted on them. Turf is a major attraction at Woodley Park, home to cricket since 1970, according to Sharma, a Northridge accountant whose association will field a team today against the Sri Lankans. In many places, cricketers play on matting laid over dirt or even concrete. But Valley cricketers have access to well-kept grass fields. The grounds are maintained by the Department of Recreation & Parks and groomed to world-class condition by local cricketers.

“It’s the dream of every cricketer to play on turf, and that’s what we have,” said Sharma. “It’s the best grounds in all the U.S.A.” As a result of the Woodley Park fields, Fernando said, “the Valley is the mecca of cricket in the United States.” Local cricketers are trying to persuade the international cricket establishment that Woodley Park would be an ideal site for second-tier World Cup play in 2000.

This year’s World Cup caused the kind of excitement in the Southland’s cricket-loving ethnic communities that marked the world tournament in soccer. According to Fernando, 200 million cricket fans around the world watched televised World Cup coverage. Because of the time difference, Valley fans had to tune in at midnight to see the games broadcast live. Fernando estimated that as many as 1,000 Sri Lankans, 5,000 Indians and 5,000 Pakistanis saw the games in Greater Los Angeles, gathering at Mother India Cafe in Reseda and other venues that charged $15 or $20 for a chance to cheer their home team until 9 in the morning on big-screen TV.

Many of the World Cup fans come from alcohol-abstaining nations such as Pakistan. When one was asked what he and his buddies drank while watching the games, he said: “We do what everybody else does. We drink beer. We just don’t talk about it.”

In addition to British-born enthusiasts, the centuries-old ball-and-bat game has fans in the local Chinese, Malaysian, Iranian, West Indian, Arab, South African, Australian, New Zealand, Dutch, Zimbabwean and Kenyan communities. Sharma said that local British pubs broadcast the games and so did at least one Indian-owned motel in Los Angeles.

Since the win, Roshan de Silva, co-owner of Sri Lankan Delight, has rented videotapes of the playoff games, including the upset, about 500 times. The store has a food stall at this weekend’s matches, serving sausages, samosas and other snacks that Sri Lankans call “short eats.” Local alumni of Sri Lankan colleges and businesses have set up tents during the matches as well.

In the days before the Sri Lankans took the field in Woodley Park, all the disparate elements of Southland cricket seemed to converge.

On Friday morning, before the team went off to Universal Studios for an afternoon of R & R, they talked to the press, local cricket stalwarts and a few fans.

Shehan Jayah, a seventh-grader at the Nobel Magnet School in Northridge, proudly clutched a red leather cricket ball autographed by his idol, Sri Lankan vice captain Arvinda de Silva, known as cricket’s Black Knight. Shehan is one of 20 youngsters in Southern California Young Cricketers, coached by 60-year-old Roy Jayasinghe of Winnetka.

Prominent local cricketers of every color and ethnicity smiled broadly as they greeted each other. Despite its historical association with the worst British snobbism, the international game is increasingly dominated by people--many of color--in former British colonies who kept their love of cricket long after they drove out their colonizers. With its emphasis on discipline, fair play and civility, cricket provides common ground in a culturally diverse society, its supporters say.

“I wouldn’t say cricket is completely colorblind,” said Sharma, “but there’s more camaraderie than in any other game I’ve ever seen. Cricket does bind us together. For those who love the game, you can’t help appreciating the guy on the other team who plays well.”

Ted Hayes, a founder of the L.A. Krickets, which recently sent a team of homeless cricketers to compete in London, said he was thrilled to be on the same field as the world champions. “It’s like the Bad News Bears hanging out with the Atlanta Braves. What a miracle!” said Hayes, who has been talking to Disney about a film about his homeless batsmen and bowlers.

Finally, the gathering on the field was joined by Jason Barry. Barry, who is as English as mushy peas, is traveling around the world, trying to win a bet by playing cricket in 52 countries in 52 weeks. Given the royal blessing of Princess Anne, he is also raising money for Save the Children.

“This is country 40,” said the 30-year-old Barry.

Barry’s cricket tour of the world has not been without incident. He was shot at at an automated teller machine in South Africa. He broke his foot playing his favorite game in the south of France. “Too much premier cru before I went to bat,” he explained. He was jailed briefly in Russia, where the police looked askance at his organizing an ad-hoc cricket game in a departure lounge in the Moscow airport.

At Woodley, Barry was promptly invited to play a match with the L.A. Krickets.

Although he had never been to the Valley before, Barry wasn’t the least bit surprised to find cricket being played here.

It’s simple, he said. “Wherever you find an Englishman, you find a game of cricket.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

For the Uninitiated, Cricket Rules Deciphered

Nothing annoys cricketers more than the way non-cricketers seem to be incapable of understanding how the game is played.

To attempt to explain it is sheer hubris. Nonetheless:

Cricket is played on a round or oval field, usually measuring 450 feet wide and 500 feet long in official play. Instead of bases, cricket has two wickets set 22 feet apart in the center of the field. Each wicket consists of three wooden stumps, 28 inches tall. Two wooden crosspieces, called bails, rest on top of each wicket. The area between the wickets is called the pitch.

During the game, the side that is up has a batsman at each wicket. They take turns hitting after six pitches, an interval called an over. The team in the field consists of a bowler or pitcher, a wicketkeeper and nine defenders. The team that scores the most runs wins.

The batsman defends the wicket by stopping a thrown ball or hitting it with his bat. If he succeeds in driving the ball into the field, both batsmen can score runs by running to the opposite wicket.

Bowlers can put batsmen out by bouncing the ball past them and dislodging the bails from the wicket. There are ten ways to be put out. For instance, the batsmen can be thrown out if they do not reach the opposite wicket in time after a hit. Both sides get 10 outs.

One-day matches such as those being played at Woodley Park last seven hours. Arguing with the umpire or fighting with the other team simply isn’t done.