South Elgin cricket club piques interest in sport

A hodgepodge team of high school students wearing neither uniforms nor protective gear gathers on the football field at South Elgin High School weekly for an unconventional workout.

Driving six stakes into the ground, they begin wielding bats and hurling balls along a makeshift cricket pitch - a rare sight at most suburban high schools.

South Elgin High's cricket club, started this year by five South Asian students - Umair Chowdhury, 18; Abbas Jaffar, 18; Saair “Badshah” Hasani, 17; Zubair Choudhry, 15; and Mohammed “Maaz” Ali, 17, all of Bartlett - is the first of its kind in Elgin Area School District U-46.

Few suburban high schools - Palatine and Prospect, among the most active - have student cricket clubs, though plenty abound at the collegiate level.

A British import, cricket bears similarities with baseball. It is played with a bat and ball, and 11 players on each of two teams playing against each other on a circular grassy field.

At South Elgin, sunny days with the football field dry enough to play on have been scarce this year.

“We were playing in the hallway for the first couple of weeks,” said Matt Eklund, club sponsor and psychology and sociology teacher at the school.

Yet, South Elgin students made the most of their weekly retreat, which helped keep alive a tradition passed down through the generations. Their fathers, uncles, brothers, and other male family members grew up playing cricket in Pakistan and India where fervor for the sport is akin to soccer for Europeans or football for Americans.

“Cricketing is like in our blood,” said Umair, who introduced the sport to classmates through a sociology project earlier this year “to make people aware that there are more sports out there other than baseball and basketball.”

It prompted his friend Abbas to suggest the idea of starting a club.

“It was our senior year. We just wanted to do something different,” Abbas said. “We've actually inspired some other high schools to start it, too.”

A few South Asian students at Barrington and Bartlett high schools also are planning to start cricket clubs next year, per the duo.

A growing sport

With the suburbs' growing South Asian communities, competitive adult cricket leagues and fields have sprouted over the years. Youth leagues, such as one run by Bolingbrook Premier League, also have hundreds of participants.

The Midwest Cricket Conference, established in 1965, comprises more than 47 adult teams from Chicago and surrounding suburbs, while the American Cricket Conference - a competitive league formed in 2001 - has more than 36 member teams with more than 500 active players. The ACC also has cricket fields in various communities, including Addison, Bolingbrook, Carol Stream, Des Plaines, Hanover Park, Glendale Heights, Plainfield and Vernon Hills.

For many South Asian families, watching cricket matches broadcast via satellite television or on the Internet and playing with friends on weekends is a time-honored pastime.

The diversity of nationalities and cultures represented in the South Elgin student club is a testament to how sports can help break down barriers.

“It feels kind of good,” Umair said. “It's great to see people want to try new things. It's great to see different cultures coming together to play.”

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Watching</a><![CDATA[ club members on the field has raised many curious eyebrows, drawing spectators and players from other sports to join in.

Senior Ryan Ottens, 17, of South Elgin, who plays volleyball, knew nothing about cricket before hearing about the club through Saair.

“It's just really laid-back, which makes it fun, too,” he said.

English teacher Kiah Loomer, who usually brought his wife and two children along to watch or help field balls, enjoys the role reversal. “It's great because (students) teach us to play,” he said.

The rules of cricket are not so foreign after all. The fielding team puts 11 players on the field, while the batting team sends out two batsmen (batters) - in cricket batsmen always work in pairs and only one bats at a time.

Batsmen must defend the wickets (strike zone) - three wooden stumps on each side of the 22-yard cricket pitch - while attempting to score runs. Instead of running the bases, they run between the wickets.

Bowlers (pitchers) use speed and spin attempting to take wickets to strike out the batsmen. They are aided by fielders who can remove a batsman either by catching the ball in the air or throwing it to the batsman's position while he is running between wickets.

A batsman can score six runs (a home run) for hitting the ball over the boundary and out of the field, four runs if the ball drops to the ground and makes it to the boundary, or rack up as many single runs as possible by running between wickets. The team that scores the most runs wins.

Cricket matches typically are played over three to five days. One-day cricket matches can last for six hours or longer.

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“It's very fun,” said Jared Tyndorf, 16, of Bartlett. “This is my second time (playing). The only knowledge I had about it was some little bit of Manga (Japanese comics and graphic novels) I read. It's actually simple once I learned how to play.”

With the core group of seniors who started the club now headed for college, a new breed of players will be sought this fall to keep the club going next school year.

“They just love it,” Eklund said. “It's a really fun sport and I hope it can get bigger in the States.”