Dinu plays cricket

I saw a small article in the local paper a few weeks ago about a local cricket group having their tournament this weekend. It's similar to the local soccer clubs where folks can get together and play on weekends. I thought it would be a fun surprise for Dinu to get to see some cricket.

We got to the field at the end of the first match, at about 10am. We walked around a bit and got over to the tent where an announcer was calling the plays (in Hindi). The team about to go onto the field was assembled under a tree and we were standing more or less with them. They spotted Dinu and started chatting, and asked if he played. He told them he hadn't played in about 9 years. One of their guys asked if he'd like to play on their team today. Dinu was astonished, but they were a man short (there are eleven on a team and their 11th guy hadn't made it) and so Dinu agreed to play. I was promptly seated under the tree and put in charge of all car keys and cellphones.

The rules are adjusted for club play. Instead of the usual one-day rules where 50 overs are played, they play twelve overs, so the matches last about 2 hours or so. Not as long as many baseball games, which is always the complaint of people who don't know cricket. Twelve overs is quite manageable. A couple other rules are also massaged, but are too esoteric to get into here.

I found out a lot about the league from the President, who came over and introduced himself. The league is an offshoot of an organization formed to keep a connection to their native culture and to teach that to the small Indian children whose parents came here for work. Playing cricket is a natural extension. Amazingly, there were a few other non-subcons there, and I found myself explaining the basics of cricket to them. The other nice thing was that once it was apparent that I was there for the day, the announcer started calling the games in English. The five or six of us who don't understand Hindi were grateful.

They lost that match, but it was a very close score (71-68) and they were playing the best team in the league. We were about to head home when Dinu's team told him they had one more game to play in the afternoon and asked if he'd stick around. I was happy to stay for that. We went to WalMart while the intervening match was played and bought a lawn chair (and went to the bathroom - no facilities at the field). Dinu's team didn't play as well in the afternoon match, but they won 56-28! Dinu was at bat once in each match and faced only one bowl each time, since he was the eleventh man and at bat last, but he made some fine fielding plays in both matches. All in all it was a lot of fun. Personally, I'd much rather watch cricket than soccer.