It’s a chilly, sunny Saturday morning at Ferry Point Park in the Bronx. Kids are playing tag under the shadows of low-flying planes making their way to LaGuardia Airport. Between the familiar blare of the ferry horn and the low rumble of 10 a.m. traffic overhead on the Whitestone Bridge, a strong whack can be heard, followed by an eruption of cheers.
Men sporting bright purple jerseys rush to the middle of an open field hollering in glee, some jumping into each other’s arms and others pumping their fists in the air. Unbeknownst to the passing joggers who barely spare a glance at the commotion, the Gotham Cricket Club has just secured itself a seemingly impossible victory against Cricket Boss XI.
“This is one of the closest games that we have won,” said Jeevy Singh, an NYU alumnus and player on Gotham CC. “Winning from the point [we were at], it’s like a miracle.”
This is New York City club cricket.
Cricket can seem like a daunting sport to those who aren’t familiar with it, particularly in the United States, as its rulebook is around 600 pages long. But the 2023 World Atlas states that it is the second-most watched sport in the world.
The bare bones of the game are that two teams of 11 players face off against each other, each aiming to score the most runs, which consists of two players running to opposite ends of a dirt pitch in the middle of an oval field. Similarly to baseball, one team bats, trying to score runs with a wooden paddle-like bat, and the other fields and bowls, trying to prevent this. The length of games can vary from a few hours to a few days, but New York City club cricket games typically last around four to five hours.
Though national teams like India and Pakistan have made huge names for themselves in the world of cricket, many people don’t know that cricket’s current popularity has its roots in colonialism. Originating in England, cricket became considered a “white man’s sport” that the British would use as a means…
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