No Mystery

The game of cricket is a mystery to most Americans, but in recent years it has found its way to Harvard.

In 1985, the Harvard Cricket Club was formed by Peter Hannam '87, with Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III as the club's faculty advisor. The club began with modest goals and meager facilities.

Until Hannam's successor, Clyvan Belle '88, took over. Belle expanded the club's membership and the schedule expanded while interest about the previously unknown sport spread across campus.

"Clyvan did a lot for the club when he was president," said this year's co-president and Co-Captain Ali Atha. "He was very enthusiastic about the sport."

Now in its fourth year of existence, the Cricket Club is gradually gaining some respect as a sport. The Under-graduate Council gave the club a $197 grant last year to buy bats, stumps (wickets) and batting gloves.

Senior Feroze Khan succeeded Clyvan and continued the task of promoting the sport on campus. The current co-captains, Atha and Shumya Das, encourage anyone interested in the club to join. Currently, most of the club is comprised of international students from Australia, Africa, Pakistan, India, England, New Zealand, and the West Indies.

"It's pretty cosmopolitan," Atha said.

There are 20 members in the club and 11 on the team. The roster varies according to who can make the games.

This season will feature a field trip the weekend after spring break, as the team travels to New York and Philadelphia for games against Columbia and Pennsylvania. The club also hopes to play MIT, Babson, and Princeton.

"If the weather cooperates, it's just a matter of getting the teams coordinated," Atha said.

The Harvard Business School has its own cricket team. Any possibilities of an across-the-river rivalry?

"They played us last year," Atha said, "and we're interested in playing them again."

There are two main versions of the game--test cricket and one-day cricket. Test cricket is a five-day game in which each team bats two innings.

Although always compared to baseball, cricket is very different--in number of innings and length of games. Baseball has nine innings lasting about two-and-a-half hours, while cricket has two innings that can take days to finish.

The Harvard club plays one-day cricket, in which each team bats one inning.

"We love to play as much as possible," Atha said, "but we don't have time to play test cricket."

But if the club did have the time, cricket at Harvard would becomes less of mystery and more of a spring pastime.