Cricket Finds Fertile Ground in Carolina

The umpire, drenched by the hard rain, is ready to call off the game.

But the two teams, wearing uniforms of bright yellow and red, have driven hours to get here and say they don’t care if the ball won’t bounce as high: They want their weekly fix of cricket, the sport so similar to baseball--and so very different.

“I don’t think I’ve seen players who wanted to play so much,” says umpire Ron Knight. “But since it’s legal, I’ll allow it.”

Knight has never been to England, cricket’s home. He learned to love the game during his only time overseas, in the West Indies as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1977-82.

Now he shares his passion with an international conglomeration of cricketers--320 players in 17 clubs in North Carolina and Virginia that belong to the Mid-Atlantic Cricket Conference. Just four years ago, the league, based in Raleigh, had only seven clubs.

There are about 15,000 players nationwide, according to the United States of America Cricket Assn.

The Research Triangle’s opportunities in technology draw people from countries where cricket is played, most typically former British colonies, says Kamran Khan, president of the association.

“Eighty to 90% of the cricket players in this country and in the Research Triangle area are people from India, Pakistan and the West Indies,” Khan says.

Cricket has an even greater following in the Northeast: New York City, Washington and Philadelphia together have more than 250 clubs and 12 leagues, he says. Florida and California have about 80 clubs each.

The sport was first played in North America in Virginia in the 1700s, says Deb Das of CricInfo, a Web site based in London. The first international cricket match was played between the United States and Canada in the 1800s.

“There is a tradition of people eating cucumber sandwiches on an English lawn, saying, ‘Well played, old chap,’ but it’s a worldwide game now,” says Knight, a 49-year-old administrative assistant for the medical school at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Local enthusiasts are trying to spread the sport. The league won permission to develop a cricket pitch on unusable parkland in nearby Morrisville, and a cricket ground is tentatively planned in Durham.

Knight runs a training program for aspiring umpires.

And Stephen Willott, one of the mid-Atlantic conference’s two Australian founders, is following California’s example, where 2,500 children in grades 3 through 5 have been taught cricket in the last two years. He introduced the sport to sixth-graders last spring with help from Don Minnick, a Chapel Hill physical education teacher.

Because of cricket’s universality, international disputes sometimes infringe upon matches large and small: India, for example, reacted to recent killings in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir by pulling out of a series against Pakistan in a Toronto tournament recently.

But Samir Tikare, a Charlotte Cricket Club member from Bombay, India, says the game also brings people together.

“We have a lot of Pakistanis, and there are absolutely no tensions here. We go to each other’s houses,” Tikare says.

Knight tells of one recent match in which a batsman from a primarily Indian team was injured while trying to make a run and was then run out, or eliminated.

The opposing team, with mostly Pakistani members, was fighting for the last playoff spot. But when the players realized their opponent was hurt, they withdrew their request for an official out, and the man kept playing. (The Pakistani team won, although it missed the playoffs.)

“I thought that was a very sportsmanlike gesture and exemplary of the game,” Knight says.

He acknowledges that cricket matches lack appeal for most Americans.

“They’re kind of boring unless you know what’s going on,” he says.

Knight knows what’s going on.

He’s one of three Americans now earning umpire certification from the Assn. of Cricket Umpires and Scorers, the governing body based in London. And he is the only umpire these players know who religiously wears formal cricket regalia to matches--black pants and black suspenders topped by white jacket over white shirt and a forest-green tie embroidered with an owl perched between two balanced scales, the logo of the umpire association.

His own touch is a Panama hat.

Players appreciate Knight’s respect for the game.

“Umpires should wear whites,” says Syed Alam, a Pakistani who works for IBM. “Ron always comes properly dressed.”

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Mid-Atlantic Cricket Conference:

https://macc.jumpsports.com

Cricket information for children:

https://www.usjuniorcricket.org

CricInfo: https://www.cricinfo.com

CricInfo in the United States:

https://www-usa.cricket.org

USA Cricket Assn.:

https://www.usaca.org