Cricket: Bowled over by a foreign sport

I was only in Dillon Gymnasium, but at the time, it sort of felt like I had gone to a faraway place. In my mind, it was a parallel universe, where baseball had different rules and artifacts had conspicuously British-sounding names. Of course, the sport I was learning was cricket, and instead of being played in a parallel universe, it’s just not played on this side of the globe.

Overall, my first experience with cricket was disorienting, frustrating and wildly anticlimactic. Despite my struggles, it was still very much enlightening.

Cricket has a lot of rules in common with baseball, but its largest similarity is that it has a lot of rules, period. For the beginner in baseball, learning about balks, the infield fly rule and the uncaught third strike can simply be too much to handle. Cricket has none of these rules, but it has many others that go by strange names and have strange exceptions. As a beginner, learning these cricket rules was simply too much for me to handle.

My journey to the otherworld of cricket began with a quick picking of teams. The captains granted my request to be put on a team with sophomore Vijit Kapoor, who was tasked with explaining the seemingly bizarre things happening around me. Kapoor is also a sports writer for The Daily Princetonian. My team took the field first, and I started at the position of mid-wicket.

It’s no simpler to explain cricket in a couple sentences than it is to explain rocket science or open-heart surgery, but the basic principle is that a batsman — like a batter in baseball — must keep the bowler — like a pitcher in baseball — from striking the wicket — like nothing in baseball — with a small leather ball. The bat doesn’t look like a baseball bat. Bowling is not exactly like pitching. If the bowler hits the wicket, the batsman is dismissed. That is similar to being struck out in baseball, except that batsmen bat only once per game, and in some varieties, that game can last five days. If the batsman hits the ball, he has the choice, but not an obligation, to run to the wicket on the opposite end. There are two wickets, and they collectively equal all the bases together in baseball. Points, or runs, are primarily scored by running back and forth between the two wickets.

Dillon is not an ideal space for the sport of cricket, which should ideally be played in a grassy oval at very least 150 yards in diameter, but the club has fashioned its own scoring rules to make the space work. I didn’t do a whole lot at the mid-wicket position, but that didn’t stop me from being confused and scared every time a batsman hit the ball in my general direction. I periodically scanned the Indian faces around me to make sure that I wasn’t doing anything wrong just by standing where I was.

After the opposing team had scored around 70 runs — a normal occurrence in cricket — I was called on to bowl. I quickly recalled what I knew about bowling: The bowler wants to run, set and then throw the ball on a bounce and try to strike the wicket behind the batsman. I nervously adjusted my hat and started my momentum toward the batsman. I felt clunky as I whipped the ball at the batsman, but the ball left my hand with a lot of velocity and took a satisfying bounce before narrowly missing the wicket. I sensed something was wrong, though. The batsman hadn’t swung, and I was getting a funny look from the wicketkeeper, the player who stands behind the wicket. Vijit rushed over to me.

“You have to keep your arm straight when you throw it — you can’t bend your elbow,” Vijit said, making the appropriate motion with his arm. “That wasn’t bad, though. Give it another try.”

I had made the equivalence of a balk in baseball. I backed up again and bounced the ball against the hardwood. The batsman had “taken guard” again in front of the wicket. I ran and wound up, keeping my elbow as straight as possible as I released the ball. The ball hopped on the floor of the gym and was headed straight for the wicket, but the batsman was quick. He connected the bat with the ball and sent the ball screaming into the far wall of the gym on a fly to score his team six runs.

I was a little dejected, but I bowled the necessary four more balls to end the “over,” allowing a handful more runs. The club wisely plays “limited overs” matches as opposed to the five-day “Test” variant, so it was soon my team’s turn to bat. Our opponents had scored 99 runs, and we would need to score more than that many to win.

Slated to bat first, I stepped up to the wicket and grabbed a bat. It felt awkward in my hands, and I swung it around a bit like a baseball bat and then like a golf club to get a feel for its moment of inertia. Vijit showed me how to hold it.

“Protect the wicket out there,” Vijit said. “Remember, if he hits the wicket, you’re dismissed, and that can happen on the first ball.”

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I lined up in front of the wicket and prepared myself. The bowler charged toward me and threw the ball with surprising quickness. It was impossible to read the spin on the seamless ball, but it was clear that there was spin of some sort when the ball contacted the gym surface. I began bringing my bat forward, but it was clear I had already been tricked. I tried to jerk the bat up to protect the wicket, but the ball squeezed through a gap in my defense, grazing the wicket. I was dismissed, and that was it.

Vijit walked over and took the bat from me. “It was a good try,” Vijit said.

I was glad to be done. Although I’m really no better at cricket than before I played, learning about what the sport actually is and what it means to those who play was a valuable experience, so thanks again to the club cricket team for showing me the sport. As it turns out, cricket is a sport better mastered in a lifetime than in an evening.