Winter 2002

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DIFFERENT PASTIME, DIFFERENT PACE The UMass Cricket Club's

by Ben Barnhart

BATSMAN UP: Sameer Masurka prepares to defend his wicket. (For more Ben Barnhart photos, click in right navigation.) SAMEER MASURKA COULDN'T BELIEVE HIS eyes. Through the windows of a PVTA bus on North Pleasant Street, half a world away from his home in Gujurat, India, he saw a dozen men in white dotting a green grass field. The thick summer air carried a familiar crack of willow bat against leather ball, then two players were running, bats in hand, between the wickets at either end of the 66-foot-long pitch. Here in Amherst, on a makeshift field between Furcolo Hall and Totman Gym, a cricket match was in progress. It was August of 1999, and Masurka was riding the bus for the first time to UMass, where in a few days he’d begin a master’s program in engineering. As a teenage cricket prodigy in India he’d played at Shivaji Park in Bombay – a kind of “cricket carnival” that produces many of the country’s star pro players – and been asked to stay on and pursue the sport professionally. He’d opted instead for the high school science track that eventually led him to UMass. With no expectation of finding his national pastime in the land of baseball – “Not in my wildest guess did I think I would have a chance to play cricket here,” he says – Masurka had left his cricket gear in India. He immediately called home to have it shipped. In the meantime he borrowed what he could, and joined the 14-year-old UMass Cricket Club. He was the club’s vice-captain last season. MASURKA'S SURPRISE WAS NATURAL: CRICKET is virtually unknown to American fans. And while elements of the game survive in baseball, there are big differences between the two. Cricket batsmen take the field two at a time, each protecting a wicket at either end of the pitch set in the middle of a large oval-shaped field. The batsmen take turns of overs–or six pitches–each, and any ball that’s struck is in play. A run is tallied when the two batsmen race from wicket to wicket after a hit, though they may choose not to run if they risk being put out before reaching the other wicket safely. Each player on the team has a turn at bat and continues until his wicket is broken. But once he sits down, he’s done for the day. When all of the team’s batsmen are out, it takes the field to defend while the opposing team tries to beat its score. In traditional five-day “test matches” a team can easily score several hundred runs and a star player may record a “century” single-handedly. The Connecticut Cricket League, to which the UMass club belongs, plays one-day matches limited to 300 pitches per team. IN THE HEAT OF A July afternoon in 2001, Masurka and Ramaswamy Sankaranarayanan, known to his mates as Ramas, roll out the heavy fiber mat that delineates the pitch, while Nish Patel and Prashant Jain pound the stumps that form the wickets into the ground at each end. Today UMass faces the United Cricket Club from Waterbury, made up mostly of West Indians who are, Masurka says, aggressive hitters. While clubs like United play together for years, the UMass team has a built-in turnover problem: nearly everyone is a student and will be in Amherst for a limited time. Peter Underdown ’93G is one of the few UMass players who’s been with the club since its very early days. He’s also one of its few Americans. The son of a Briton, Peter grew up in Philadelphia playing backyard cricket with his dad, and often spent summers with relatives in Somerset, England, where he watched the great Viv Richards play. “My family was cricket-mad,” says Underdown. Though he’d had no way to play organized cricket as a kid, Underdown was an easy choice for the Haverford College team when he attended that school. In 1988 he came to UMass for a master’s degree in computer science and “instigated” unofficial cricket matches here. “I’d heard that there was actually some cricket equipment in Boyden so I signed it out,” he says. “After the third time they told me, ‘Look, don’t bother to bring it back.’ I think those original stumps are still in our kit bag.” SCRAPING TOGETHER ENOUGH PLAYERS FOR a match wasn’t easy those first few years. That changed in 1992 with the arrival of engineering grad student Rajeev Koodli ’93G, ’98G, who was “a cricketer of the highest caliber in India,” according to Underdown. “That was the beginning of the club,” he says. Koodli is now in California, but Underdown still lives on North Pleasant Street just across from Totman Gym and within shouting distance of the cricket field. Over the years he’s held nearly every club office, from vice-captain to treasurer, but he says his most important role is that of organizer. “We’re at the point now where we need to develop a constitution, write things down, and put some attention on spreading the word,” he says. At this point the club’s outreach is mostly word-of-mouth among a small group of friends and aquaintances, mostly from the School of Engineering and mostly natives of the Indian subcontinent. (Players have occasionally been subjected to taunts from passing cars, and the words “cricket sucks” were once dug into the clay pitch before a league match.) Underdown says the club wants to widen participation, at least among other international students such as those from Britain and the Caribbean. They’re making a start through their website, www.umass.edu/cricket, and by occasionally staffing an information table on the Campus Center concourse. SOME MAY CHAFE UNDER THE slow pace of baseball’s ancestral game, but cricketers seem to revel in it. In fact a cricket match, especially at the club level at which UMass plays, seems more a picnic in the park than a sporting event. Players bring coolers filled with sandwiches and sodas, and pass around snacks during play. Friends and family spread blankets under the nearest tree, and, against the backdrop of cricketers in action, pass the time with books, card games, or – in a salute to modernism – cell phone conversations. As the summer sun moves across the sky during the course of a long afternoon, the blankets follow the safety of the shade. UMass’s leadoff batsmen, Ramas and Patel, take their positions at the wickets to start the game. The United bowler rubs the single-seam, cherry-red ball against his leg as if he’s shining a bright red apple: By maintaining a slick surface on one side of the ball, he can curve his deliveries more effectively to confound the UMass batsmen. Using a whirling overhand motion, the bowler hurls the ball at speeds approaching 90 mph as it skips and spins off the mat toward the batsman. After an hour-and-a-half under the hot sun, the game is halted for a bit while the UMass players fill cups of ice water from a large thermos and pass them to their United guests. UMass tallies 107 runs before all its batsmen are put out, and they take the field to defend, in positions with names like “gully,” “third slip,” “long off” and “square leg.” Some wear large floppy hats, some baseball caps, to shield their eyes. All are gloveless except the wicketkeeper. Those aggressive West Indian bats soon produce 109 runs while UMass only takes two wickets, and the game is called. None of the UMass players seem overly disappointed. After all, who could complain about a summer day in the park?

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