From pitches to parks, cricket fever sweeps Nassau County

Cricket is a sport not many Americans are familiar with. Around the globe however, especially in Southeast Asian countries, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, and the West Indies, it is widely enjoyed, watched and played in a variety of adaptive ways.

With the International Cricket Committee Men’s T20 World Cup scheduled to take place in just a few weeks in Eisenhower Park, Nassau County hosted a Criiio Cricket Social Festival last week in Fields 2 and 3 of the park. The event, inspired by the ICC’s Criiio program, aimed to showcase cricket as a vibrant, inclusive sport that can be played anywhere, by anyone, at any time.

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game that is played traditionally between two teams of eleven players. The game originated in the 1500s in England and is played with a wooden bat, a hard leather ball, stumps and bails, as well as protective gear that includes helmets, pads, gloves and abdominal guards.

A common term heard when watching a game of cricket is “the pitch” — which is 22-yard-long strip in the center of the field. This is where most of the action takes place. There are three vertical stumps, topped with two horizontal bails, at each end of the pitch. 

The objective is to score a run, and the simplest way to do that is when a “batsmen” or the person holding a bat hits the ball to the opposite side of the pitch. Players can be dismissed, or considered “out,” due to a variety of things. Some include when the ball hits the stump and dislodges a bail, when a ball is caught by someone without it bouncing, or if a ball strikes a batsman’s body before it hits the bat.

Balls are “bowled” to the person hitting it with a bat. A bowler aims to dismiss the batsmen and restrict the number of runs. Each bowler will roll one “over,” which means six legal deliveries from one end of the pitch. Fielders are positioned strategically around the field, to stop runs and dismiss batsmen. A “wicketkeeper” stands behind stumps to catch balls.

Games are broken down into “innings” — just like baseball, and the team with the most runs at the end of a match wins. An inning ends when ten players are out. Twenty20 cricket, or T20 — hence the name of the world cup — is the shortest format of international cricket play, limited to 20 overs per side. Each team will play one inning in this form of cricket, and only 120 balls will be bowled.

Here in the U.S., fans of baseball, basketball and other sports may play adapted versions of those games with their friends in an informal setting. Stickball, or three-on-three basketball games, are all modified versions of the original sport. For cricket, that’s Criiio.

Criiio is a global campaign that promotes the joy of cricket in its most informal forms — like backyard matches to beach cricket. By integrating Criiio into schools and community programs, the ICC aims to make cricket more accessible to youth around the world.

The Criiio Cricket Festival at the park on May 17 brought communities together. Dozens of people, from all over Long Island, came out to participate in the festivities. The event offered young enthusiasts — or those new to the sport — a firsthand experience of cricket during an exciting time. The festival, according to county officials, celebrated the spirit of cricket but also emphasized the sport’s ability to unite diverse groups through shared play.

Umer Aslam, who attended the social festival at the park, spoke with the Herald about the excitement surrounding the upcoming tournament. Aslam lives in Dix Hills, and was sporting a local jersey for the LI Warriors in the Kings Cricket Club.

“We are super excited,” Aslam said. “I have been playing cricket since I was a kid. This is like a dream come true. I’ve managed to get the tickets for Pakistan versus Canada, and I’m really looking forward to it.”

The Cricket World Cup is watched by billions of people around the world, and many games in Eisenhower Park, including the highly anticipated match between India versus Pakistan, are expected to draw major crowds.

“It’s going to be a packed house,” Aslam said. 

“During the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup there will be tens of thousands in attendance and over a billion viewers around the world watching the World Cup matches being held here in Nassau County,” County Executive Bruce Blakeman said.  “This Criiio Cricket Social Festival creates an opportunity for our young people to participate in a workshop where they will learn more about this globally popular sport.”

The ICC provided Nassau County with 100 Criiio kits, which include equipment to play cricket, to be integrated in schools, so students across the county can learn about the game ahead of the tournament.

Cricket games are scheduled to be played from June 3 to June 12 in Eisenhower Park. The venture is entirely funded by the ICC and T20 World Cup USA. For more information on the upcoming festival, call (516) 572-0200.

Additional reporting by Tim Baker