Crossing over from baseball to cricket? Seems straightforward. I learned it isn’t.
You may remember the book Paper Lion (1966) by George Plimpton and the film of the same name (1968). At age 36, the author joined the training camp of the 1963 Detroit Lions to try out to be the team’s third-string quarterback. The coaches were aware of the deception, but the players were not until they saw Plimpton, who did not know how to take the snap from center. But Plimpton convinced the coach to let him take the first five snaps in an intra-squad scrimmage. Plimpton managed to lose yardage on each play.
One day, I found myself just as out of my depth as Plimpton. In my case, it was on a cricket field.
But first, let’s talk cricket. Most Americans think of cricket as an inferior brand of baseball designed for elderly Englishmen with short pants and knobby knees. That’s fiction. Playing the game requires the same strength, coordination, quick thinking, and concentration as its American counterpart, and is just as popular in England as well as in most of its former colonies.
The baseball/cricket analogy was driven home in a Sports Illustrated article by English novelist John Fowles, who put it this way: “All Americans need to understand that, whatever the obvious superficial differences between the two modern games, they are both about precisely the same things–pitching and batting, catching and fielding, running and tagging bases.”
Photo from Cornell Cricket Club Facebook page
In summer 1974, between my junior and senior years at Cornell University, I wrote about the Cornell Cricket Club, which was founded in 1903. To write the article, I interviewed Paul Salamanowicz, a Cornell junior who joined the club as a freshman.
He was the only American on the club, which was mostly made up of students and professors raised in countries where cricket is as popular as baseball in America.
Salamanowicz’s mother is English, and his great-grandfather was a cricketer in England at the turn of the century. At age 14, Paul came across some books on cricket and wrote about them to his grandfather in England. A few weeks later, he received a cricket bat and some cricket balls from his grandfather.
“I felt like a Stone Age man coming under a strange influence,” Salamanowicz reflected. “I didn’t know exactly what to do with the things. I just started tinkering around with them in the backyard. My father wasn’t too happy about it. He always wanted me to be a baseball player.
Clive Holmes, assistant professor of English history at Cornell, talked about the day he discovered the club in August 1969, a few months after arriving from England: My wife, Pat, and I had just come up from New York City to get settled at Cornell. It was very hot, and we were homesick, so we took a walk and passed by Hoy Field. I looked out on the grass and couldn’t believe what I saw. ‘My God, Pat! They’re playing cricket!’ I shouted.
Here’s how the game is played:
–In the center of the cricket field is a 66-foot-long strip of smooth, flat turf called the pitch. There are two bases, or wickets, at each end of the pitch. The batsman stands at one wicket while the bowler faces him from the other. The bowler–a deceptive term since the bowler throws overhand–generally makes the ball land a few feet in front of the batsman, who must hit the ball on a bounce with his paddle-like bat. He may hit it in any direction, since there is a 360-degree fair zone. But a pop fly is just as fatal in cricket as in baseball – an easy out.
Cornell alum Saurabh Netravalkar, who played for the Cornell Cricket Club, has an impressive resume in the game–a College Cricket All-Star, a member of the Indian Cricket Team at the U19 World Cup, played with the Guyana Amazon Warriors, and captained USA Cricket (photo courtesy Cornell Cricket Club)
–Two players from the batting team, the batsman and non-striker, stand in front of either wicket holding bats, while the bowler bowls the ball toward the batsman’s wicket from the opposite end of the pitch. The batsman’s goal is to hit the ball and then switch places with the non-striker, with the batting team scoring one run for each of these exchanges.
–The hard leather-covered cricket ball is slightly smaller than a baseball and slightly heavier. Although required to keep their arm straight from shoulder to wrist, the best cricket bowlers can hurl the ball at speeds approaching 100 miles per hour. The catcher or wicket keeper is provided with padded gloves, but the ten other fielders must use their bare hands.
–If the ball knocks over the wicket, the batter is bowled, or out. The pitch is centered within a large oval boundary chalked on the grass. A cricket home run, called a “six” and good for six runs, is a blast that clears this boundary, usually 420-480 feet away, on the fly.
–The batsman stays on the field until he is either bowled out (the ball knocks over the wicket), or a fielder catches the ball in the air, or the fielder hits a wicket with the ball before a batter can cross the crease line in front of the wicket. A good batsman will remain on the field for a long time, scoring many runs.
One Sunday that summer, I traveled with the Cornell Cricket Club to a match in a nearby city to help me write my article. When we arrived, the Cornellians were short one player. Guess who they asked to play? I felt just like George Plimpton, a fish out of water. But I was a pretty good baseball player, so when I stepped up to the wicket for my turn, I thought I could clobber that little cricket ball.
The first pitch bounced in front of me, but as I got ready to swing, the ball changed direction (evidently the bowler had put some spin on it). I took a mighty cut but weakly popped the ball up to a waiting fielder. My turn was over.
There was no joy in Mudville. “Mighty Matty” had struck out.
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A version of this article first appeared in the Ithaca New Times on July 28, 1974.
