Mary Langenfeld
Abhishek Kulkarni, a member of the Madison Cricket Club, attempts to score a run during a game at Reindahl Park.
At a break between matches on a Sunday afternoon, dozens of cricketers set down their gear and circle around Ald. Samba Baldeh.
He’s not the coach — he’s the elected official representing Madison’s far east side. But you could call him the city’s patron saint of cricket for his role in securing a $30,000 budget amendment this year to improve the pitch in Reindahl Park, where members of the Madison Cricket Club play.
“We’re going to continue to pursue improvements,” Baldeh tells the players, who for the first time this year have a new practice area and an improved run-up — the area where bowlers make their approach on the field. He and the club members are eager to do more, perhaps adding infrastructure like nets and a pavilion for spectators. For now, they’re thankful for the city’s support in their quest to grow the club and secure Reindahl as the permanent home of Madison’s lively cricketing community.
“We’re from developing nations,” jokes Pavi Misra, a longtime club member. “We can get by.”
Misra, like many of the cricket club’s 150 members, moved to the U.S. from India, where cricket isn’t just a sport — “it’s more like a religion,” he says. Invented in England in the 16th century, it came to India along with British colonialism. Cricket started there as a game for the elite, but it soon caught on with the rest of society and developed into a nationwide obsession that peaked when India won the cricket world cup in 1983.
“That fueled people up to become cricket fans,” says Misra, who remembers being a child and stealing his mother’s washboard to use as a bat and fashioning a ball out of old bike tire tubes. He and his friends played in the street and called it “gully cricket” — the game was inexpensive, accessible and infectious.
The Madison Cricket Club has members of all ages who play for fun, recreation and fitness. But there are a few rock-star players: Ernest Allen, who grew up in Jamaica (another former British colony) and played cricket in college, and Navi Singh, a semi-professional player from India who helped his team win six national championships.
“In India, they worship cricketers,” Singh says. And the rivalries are fierce — especially among fans. “If India loses, especially to Pakistan, people break their TVs.”
In the cricketing world, rivalries are often political. But in the Madison Cricket Club, people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Caribbean, Australia and the U.S. play side-by-side. Pakistan and India have a history of political tension and a fierce cricket rivalry, but “none of that matters” in the Madison club, says Asad Mohammad, who was raised in Pakistan before moving here.
Raj Shah, who moved from India to Madison with his parents in 1999, says the cricket league community gives him motivation to stay fit in the offseason. But perhaps more importantly, he says, cricket is one of the main reasons he’s decided to stay in Madison all these years.
“This ground is like a lifeline for us,” Shah says. “This club is the reason why I never moved away. This is something that reminds me of home.”
Jon Schnelle is one of the few white guys in the league — a native Midwesterner who grew up playing softball. He’s a college friend of Shah, who introduced him to cricket. Schnelle spent a year observing the league and learning the complicated sport before picking up a bat.
“There’s more strategy involved,” Schnelle says. “It’s almost like playing a card game.”
He admits he sometimes gets funny looks when he shows up at a pitch, but he says learning cricket has “opened [his] mind up to cultural differences,” he says. “It gets rid of racial tensions.”
An immigrant from Ghana, Baldeh knows how important traditions like cricket are to transplanted individuals.
“[Cricket] is something that connects them to this country and helps them feel comfortable and belong,” he says. “It makes Madison feel like home.”
Number of cricket fans in the world: 2.5 billion
Longest cricket match ever: 150 hours and 14 minutes (Loughborough University Staff Cricket Club, Leicestershire, England, June 24-30, 2012)
Cricket terminology: bouncer (a short, fast pitch that reaches the batsman’s head); sledging (verbally abusing an opponent to break concentration); pie chucker (a poor bowler)
