Bringing America back to an old favorite: cricket

Love can make people do some strange things.

For Grace van der Byl, that thing was cricket. After she married her husband, Neil, van der Byl found herself watching games in the Houston Cricket League every weekend.

“I was trying to be a supportive wife,” she said.

One day, with her husband’s team short of players and losing badly, she was invited to take the field. She snared a catch in the outfield and her fate was sealed. Grace van der Byl was a cricketer.

Since then, van der Byl has made her name in U.S. cricketing circles. To the best of her knowledge, she is America’s first female certified cricket umpire. As manager of the Texas state team, she has won a national championship. She is now national development manager for Major League Cricket, an enterprise that seeks to take cricket into the American mainstream.

At first glance, cricket may seem as foreign to Americans as warm beer, driving on the left side of the road and socialized medicine. But to the men and women behind Major League Cricket, that perception is nothing more than a failure of marketing.

The organization is seeking to change American attitudes toward the game with professional promotion, TV coverage and recognizable stars. Perhaps most important for a sport in which games can last for almost a week, the league is promoting a form of the game intended to shake off cricket's reputation as a byword for tedium.

The histories of America and cricket intertwine. George Washington is believed to have played the game with his troops at Valley Forge. In front of Congress, John Adams poured scorn on the proposed name for America’s commander-in-chief: “Cricket clubs have presidents,” he said. Clearly his peers did not share his disdain.

In 1844, Manhattan played host to the first international cricket match: Canada vs. the United States. Perhaps that is where the American relationship with the game turned sour. Canada won.

According to Bernard J. Cameron, chief executive of Major League Cricket, the sport's American pedigree has gone unnoticed for too long. “This is not British,” he said, speaking from the league's headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y. “This is American.”

The sport itself shares some similarities with a more familiar pastime. Van der Byl noticed when she first started watching the game that “the bowler is bit like a pitcher; the wicketkeeper is a bit like a catcher or shortstop.” The game is based on the interplay of bat and ball. Clean hitting, agile fielding and accurate bowling are the prized fundamentals.

For Sean Reardon, 40, the skills required to play cricket came pretty easily. “From playing baseball, my fielding set me apart from just about everybody,” said Reardon, who lives in Pepperall, Mass.

As a younger man, he played everything from football to baseball to lacrosse. But as time passed, he let his athletic ambitions dwindle. “All I really had left was snowboarding,” Reardon said.

When he spotted a gaggle of cricketers on the local baseball field, Reardon’s curiosity was piqued. He joined in and soon overcame his initial uncertainty. “Once you know the game,” he said, “your athletic skills kind of take over.”

Reardon was recently appointed Major League Cricket's state development officer for Massachusetts. Although he only started playing the game in August, Reardon has become a self-described cricket fanatic. “This game is as competitive as anything I’ve ever participated in,” he said.

In his role for the league, Reardon’s job is to promote the game in his state. He is seeking to put together youth teams to compete in future interstate tournaments as well as expand the pool of adult players.

“Everyone I see is a potential cricketer,” Reardon said, describing his conviction that the game comes easily to Americans, already familiar with the athletic requirements of baseball and football.

The league's strategy is to promote cricket from the grassroots, using a network of state development officers to raise awareness, coordinate tournaments and, most important, interest schools and youth clubs in the sport.

For the most part, the organization offers centralized administration and support to existing domestic cricket activities. “The idea is not to reinvent the wheel,” Parag Harolikar, the league's vice president of cricket operations, said in an e-mail message.

In addition to grassroots efforts, Major League Cricket is pursuing agreements with sports marketing and public relations firms to pitch the game into the forefront of the American mind. The first National Interstate Cup was held in Cooper City, Fla., in November. Texas emerged as the inaugural national champion, beating out teams representing Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Washington.

The principal tool for bringing America back to cricket will be the game itself. The league is promoting a format called “20/20.” In 20/20 cricket, matches last about as long as a baseball game. Each team has one inning of about 100 balls--the winner being the team that scores the most.

Major League Cricket and its supporters believe that cricket, shaken loose from its torpid rhythms, can once again be the sport of presidents. It may seem a far-fetched dream, but to Bernard Cameron, it’s a return to the nation’s roots: “We are tapping into the historic soul of America.”

E-mail: acf2112@columbia.edu