Cricket

This past weekend I went to and played in my first ever cricket match. I do not know what compelled me to want to take up the sport, but I thought that while I was in a foreign country I should try to play a foreign sport. Now, cricket is not a native sport to China, in fact, not many sports are even popular in China. You will find basketball, ping pong, snooker (~pool), and soccer dominating the TV sets. Cricket is played largely by the Indian and English communities of China.

Last weekend I looked online for a club in Beijing, and…what do you know?... I found the Beijing Cricket Club! Their website said they had an indoor tournament at Dulwich College (a closed community for foreigners catering to grades K-12) the upcoming weekend. I emailed the host and marked my calendar. The only problem was getting there. Dulwich College could not be further away. It is on the opposite corner of the city, but after an hour subway ride and 3 transfers I was there. I met up with all the players and asked if I could watch the games. A Brit named Ian came up to me and said, “We can do you one better, you can play!” I was wearing athletic clothes because I thought playing might be a possibility and for indoor there is no gear besides the wickets and a bat, so I was all set. I will not do the game a dishonor and try to explain the rules because I really do not fully understand them yet, but basically what I learned from the game is that each team has two batters on the field. One is batting and one is running and the number of runs they score is based on how many times they can safely reach the opposite wicket. The wicket is the three pronged wooden thing you see sticking out of the ground on opposite ends of the field. When the opposite batter reaches the other wicket the batters switch and the other one becomes the runner. The bowler or pitcher will throw the ball and on a bounce the batter will hit the ball. The most confusing part for me was that you do not have to run every time you hit it, only when the scoring chance looks advantageous, because an out is extremely detrimental to the team. Outs are so uncommon that they are celebrated by the team like a goal in soccer. Now that you understand the rules as much as I did before I stepped in to play why don’t you have a go? Kidding. That is what it felt like for me though, minimal information and just go up and play ball. My team consisted of me and a bunch of Pakistanis. They let me hit first out of courtesy assuming I would probably suck. I really did not expect much either, but I stepped up to the wicket. (Another interesting part about the game is protecting the wicket. If the bowler gets the ball by you and it hits the wicket you are out.) I stepped up and protected the wicket. The first pitch came in hard, bounced and I just treated it like a baseball swing and wacked at it. It felt good and there was solid contact and the ball traveled in the air to the back wall of the gym and hit it on a fly. Everyone cheered loudly and I was surprised by the reaction. I really did not know what I did. Apparently the first time I was up I hit a home run equivalent or what they call a 6 because you get 6 runs for it. I thought that this game would be easy if I could do that on my first try, but as the 6 hour match went on I realized how hard it really was to make solid contact like I did the first time and did not get another 6 for the rest of the day. After batting through our 50 overs it was our turn to take the field and protect the score. Fielding was essentially like baseball and I was pretty good at it. They stuck me in basically right field because not many balls usually come that way but I did see a lot of action and they soon moved me to a different position after they saw I could field. Everyone gets a chance to bowl usually and my turn came about halfway through the other team’s overs. I had watched my team and the other team throw and I got the motion down in my head. This would be the first time I would put it into action. I would get 6 pitches like every bowler does and my goal is to allow as little runs as possible. The first throw was right on the money and I caught the batter on the fists, no runs. The next few pitches went the same way. The last pitch the batter made solid contact but it was a hard ground ball right at me and I fielded it right by the wicket so no one could score. With the Pakistani national team behind me I let up no runs and pitched what is called a “Maiden” or basically a no hitter for my inning because there were no runs scored. I was not aware of how rare this was either until at the end of the game they announced the 3 out of 15 pitchers who successfully pitched “maidens.” We ended up winning by 33 runs which is pretty close despite what some may think. At the end of the day, I feel like I impressed a lot of the guys who had been playing their whole life and some could not believe this was my first time ever seeing cricket. I assured them it was and explained that I played baseball my entire life so some of the skills are transitional. After the game we went to a local sports bar and watch the Pakistan vs. Sri Lanka cricket match. We drank some beers and ordered pizza. It was basically the English guys and me by the end of the night, and I must say Brits are a hell of a lot of fun. They assured me that there is a spot on the team this spring and I need to come to the opening dinner banquet on March 19. I had a great time playing cricket and I really think I found my sport after football. With the chance of me studying abroad for graduate school as well in a country like Ireland or England I feel it will bea great pass time.


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Jordan J. Foley
傅力波