A Jolly Good Spot for Cricket Film
Producers of a British TV documentary on “Cricket in the Americas” hardly expected to find themselves on location on an asphalt basketball court at a South-Central Los Angeles school.
But there they were Wednesday, at Sheenway School and Culture Center, a tiny private school near Watts where a small but devoted cadre of cricket enthusiasts has bloomed under the tutelage of coach Leo Magnus.
Twice a week, 17 Sheenway students don their regulation whites--sweatpants and long-sleeved T-shirts--and gather on the playground to hone their skills at batting, bowling (the cricket equivalent of pitching) and wicket keeping. And they’re catching on fast.
“The great thing about it is that they’re so enthusiastic. They love it,” said Mustafa Khan, a volunteer at Sheenway School who introduced the sport there about a year ago. “When nighttime falls, you can hardly get them to go home.”
Khan was a member of the Homies and Popz team--composed of inner-city youth and homeless men from the Dome Village housing complex near downtown Los Angeles--that went on a four-match tour of England in 1995. His exposure to cricket had such a profound effect on him that he decided he had to share it with his students.
Khan says the genteel ways of cricket, in which players are forbidden from so much as glaring at an umpire, can impart valuable lessons to inner-city kids.
“All cricketers are polite, well-mannered; that’s something that’s missing from American society. This is a game of patience,” he said.
Khan was responsible for recruiting Magnus, who has played and coached at the international level and who coaches the Homies and Popz team, to come coach at the school about five months ago.
“One of the ambitions, as we go along, we’ll break them into two teams and teach them actual match play,” said Magnus, a native of Jamaica who began coaching the Sheenway students about five months ago. “Our next ambition is to challenge other schools. “
They won’t have many to choose from. Sheenway, a predominantly African American school that currently enrolls 33 students, preschool through 12th grade, is one of only a handful of schools in the state that plays cricket.
That’s what made it an attractive subject for Trans World International, the sports production company commissioned by the International Cricket Council to film a series of half-hour specials on cricket around the world.
Producer Rhodri Evans said Sheenway’s cramped asphalt playground will provide a contrast to the lawns of the Beverly Hills Cricket Club, where the crew filmed a short segment Tuesday.
The documentaries are slated to air overseas in early April.