New York children will be encouraged to fling off their baseball gloves and pick up a cricket ball after education chiefs established a league in the city's schools.

Cricket may be battling against declining interest in English and Caribbean schools, but it is becoming increasingly popular in a city more famous for the Yankees and Dodgers baseball teams.

Impressed by numbers of white-clad young players in the city's parks at weekends, New York's Department of Education has set up a league, with about 600 state secondary school students playing. Announcing its decision, the department said New York was the first and only state school system in America to offer competitive cricket.

It is a remarkable turnaround for a sport that was as popular with 19th century Americans as baseball.

Old maps of New York show cricket pitches on Central Park.

However, tarnished by the accusation, encouraged by the baseball lobby, that cricket was effete and elitist, the game died out.

The new cricket league was initiated by Eric Goldstein, who oversees sports programmes for the city's education department.

He said that while travelling around New York, he noticed that in the major parks "a lot of people were playing cricket on weekends".

"The old baseball field I played on in Cunningham Park in Queens is now a cricket pitch. It's amazing," he told the New York Times.

Most New York cricketers are South Asian and Caribbean immigrants or their children. Around 650 adults already play in six leagues.

Plans are afoot to introduce a cricket league to young children at middle school level.

Nobody is predicting that cricket is about to overtake baseball or American football in popularity but its growth reflects a move away from traditional US sports among immigrant communities.

The popularity of football, once largely confined to children's leagues, has soared in tandem with America's growing Hispanic population.

The Wall Street Journal said that while Americans had "long viewed cricket as a frivolously complicated, inferior sport", US businessmen would be wise to learn about it so they can converse with fans in international business meetings.

The first cricket stadium in the US has just been completed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and an inaugural international match is scheduled there next month.



A wicket falls during a high school game in Queens, New York

http://www.psal.org

http://www.psal.org/psalsports/sport/psal_sppage.aspx?csport=056

PSAL SCHEDULE: Wednesday, April 9, 2008
grady @ stuyvesant
ferry point park
Bronx
4:00pm

automotive @ medgar evers
seaview ave. /108st
Brooklyn
4:00pm

roosevelt @ prospect
seaview ave./108st
Brooklyn
4:00pm

dewitt clinton @ john adams
baisley/foch blvd.
Queens
4:00pm

long island city @ richmond hill
flushing meadow park
Queens
4:00pm

aviation @ newcomers
baisley pond park
Queens
4:30pm

quote:

dewitt clinton @ john adams

big up ma ole skool DeWC

beat dem JA losers

Dewitt Clinton 85 in 20 overs.
John Adams 86 in 19.5 overs

John Adams batsman hit a six in the last over to win the game.

PSAL SCHEDULE: Thursday, April 10, 2008
Newcomers @ Dewitt Clinton
ferry point park
Bronx
4:00pm

Qns Teaching @ Richmond Hill
baisley pond park
Queens
4:00pm

I posted this trivia in 2005 when ASJ and I had a discussion on the event.

The first ever international rcorded cricket match was betwen Canada and the United States in 1844.

Dem_Guy

=================


United States v Canada (1844)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


United States of America v Canada (1844) was the first ever official international cricket match[1] to be played. It was contested by the national teams of the USA and Canada. The match took place between 25 and 27 September 1844 at the St George's Cricket Club, Bloomingdale Park in New York. Canada won by 23 runs. The game was watched by between 10,000 and 20,000 spectators and around $120,000 worth of bets were placed.

Contents

1 The Background
2 The Match
3 Match Details
4 References


The Background

The origins of the match lay four years earlier when a team from the St George's Club turned up in Toronto, almost destitute after a hard slog by stage coach through New York State, and across Lake Ontario by steamer. A certain Mr Phillpotts had invited St George's to play the Toronto Cricket Club at home, but when the 18 men arrived on 28 August, 1840, the Canadians were not expecting them and their mysterious host could not be found.

Despite the lack preparations, a cricket match was hastily arranged, which was attended by a good number of spectators, a brass band and Sir George Arthur, the Governor of Upper Canada. The New Yorkers won, and left on such good terms that they invited the Canadians down for what was to be the first international cricket match.

The Match

The US team was drawn from clubs in Philadelphia, Washington DC and Boston, as well as a number in New York. Likewise, the Canadians tried to present a representative national team, rather than simply the Toronto CC team. Advertisements and posters for the game found in libraries have the game between the USA and Canada, rather than two city teams.

The game was scheduled for two days and the score after the first day saw Canada with 82, beating the USA's 64 runs. On the second day, bad weather prevented play, so the game was extended to a third day when Canada scored 62 and the USA 58. So, finally Canada won by 23 runs. The US player Wheatcroft arrived too late on the third day and was replaced by Alfred Marsh[2].


Match Details

25 - 27 September 1844 United States Canada won by 23 runs Canada St George's Cricket Club, New York
Attendance: Between 5,000 and 20,000

UNITED STATES:

1 J Turner
2 R Ticknor
3 G Wheatcroft
4 S Wright
5 J Ticknor
6 RN Tilson
7 J Syme
8 S Dudson
9 H Groom
10 W Wild
11 R Bage
CANADA:

1 D Winckworth
2 JC Wilson
3 CJ Birch
4 GA Barber
5 G Sharpe
6 GA Phillpotts
7 JB Robinson
8 HJ Maddock
9 Freeling
10 F French
11 W Thompson


Source: CricketArchive [1]

Reference Source

April 3, 2008

Playing a Sport With Balls and Bats, but No Pitcher

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS


A batsman from Richmond Hill High in a game against Aviation High in Queens on Wednesday, the opening day of the public schools’ cricket league.

Cricket, which its fans say is the world’s second most popular sport, is played by millions of people around the globe. But it is pursued seriously by probably fewer than 1,000 people in New York City, where the game is played in relative obscurity, its matches confined to the corners of the city.

Yet New York has long been among the centers of cricketing in the nation, holding the national championships as recently as 2006.

On Wednesday, the Department of Education inaugurated cricket as its newest league sport, with about 600 high school students playing on 14 teams during a 12-game season. The first matches, held in Queens, featured teams from John Adams, Richmond Hill, Aviation and Newcomers High Schools.

The Department of Education said New York is the only public school system in the nation to offer competitive cricket.

The high school league follows the Parks and Recreation Department’s first cricket tournament, which was held in June at Spring Creek Park in Brooklyn and attracted 20 teams of 15 players each, as well as hundreds of fans.

No one is expecting the game to overtake baseball, football or soccer in popularity here any time soon, but a modest increase in interest in the sport won the attention of Eric Goldstein, who is the chief executive for school support services and oversees sports programs for the Department of Education.

“In my travels around the city, it became clear that in the major parks around the city a lot of people were playing cricket on weekends,” he said.

“The old baseball field I used to play on in Cunningham Park in Queens is now a cricket pitch. It’s amazing to see.”

Cricket is not a newcomer to the city. The New York Times once covered local players as critically as the sports pages now write about the Yankees or the Knicks. On May 6, 1900, The Times reported:

“The first regular cricket games of the season were played yesterday, and notwithstanding that the weather was rather cold for cricket, and that the grounds were not in the best condition, several enjoyable games took place. At Prospect Park, the Manhattans had the Nelson Lodge, Sons of St. George, as opponents, and gained an easy victory by 98 runs. Several of the Nelson men shaped up very well, but they exhibited a lack of practice.”

Cricket was carried across the world by the British Empire, but never caught on in the United States, where it is most popular among immigrants from nations like India, Pakistan and Jamaica that were once ruled by Britain. Most of the city’s adult and high school players are immigrants from South Asia and the Caribbean, or their children.

Parks on the edges of the city — Van Cortlandt, Soundview and Ferry Point in the Bronx; Canarsie Beach in Brooklyn; and Baisley Pond in Queens — are filled with cricket players on summer weekends, their crisp white uniforms presenting a vivid contrast on the grass fields. Some 650 adults play in the city’s six leagues.

“Thirty years I’ve been trying to get attention for cricket here, and it’s finally come to fruition,” said Hubert Carlyle Miller, 69, of Queens, a former manager of the United States cricket team who also has competed for his native Guyana. “We’re looking at many immigrants who once played the sport, but because of the lack of exposure they don’t know that cricket is played at a high level here.”

Mr. Goldstein said that before he decided to start a high school cricket league, he wanted to see whether there was any enthusiasm among teenagers, given that the teams in the city’s league consist almost exclusively of adults.

He said he anticipated finding enough interest to field four teams, but wound up having so many students sign up that he was able to form 14 squads, with several new teams likely for next year.

“To get kids moving and out there playing in an era of obesity and diabetes is really important,” he said. “A lot of these kids would not otherwise be involved in sports.”

The Department of Education is financing the teams through its marketing contract with Snapple.

Fahad Yousaf, 16, a senior at Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn, said he had played cricket in Lahore, Pakistan, where his family lived before moving to the United States.

“People don’t play it here, so they learn it from their own countries,” he said.

Fahad also has played on Roosevelt High’s varsity volleyball team, and he said he had tried out for the basketball squad, but “people were dunking over my head.”

Mr. Miller said one of cricket’s strong points is that it is a relatively egalitarian sport. To do well, players do not have to be as muscular or as tall as the athletes who dominate football and basketball.

“The grass-roots American kids who are not 6-foot-10 and 300 pounds can play this,” he said. He pointed out that perhaps the best cricket player in history, Donald Bradman, who played for Australia in the 1930s and 1940s, was 5-foot-7.

The game is similar to baseball, but with differences that can make it difficult for Americans to follow. Players run with their bats in hand; balls are bowled, not pitched; spit balls are allowed; fielders are not permitted to wear gloves; there is no foul territory; and bowlers (pitchers) sprint before releasing the ball, which typically bounces and picks up spin before reaching a batsman.

Nigel Thompson, 41, the cricket coach at Herbert H. Lehman High School in the Bronx, is also the boys’ varsity basketball coach at the James Monroe Educational Campus in the Bronx.

Mr. Thompson, who grew up on the island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean, said he had to teach some of his players the rules, even though many of them had grown up with the game, as he had. He said there were few players on the team, which included one girl, who were not first- or second-generation immigrants from cricket-loving nations.

Mr. Thompson said the sport could catch on in the United States — eventually.

“I don’t think it’s going to lead to a situation where American kids are going to have to debate, ‘Oh, should I play cricket or should I play basketball?’ ” he said. “At least not yet.”

source