Sports

At the end of last year, cricket became an official coed varsity Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) sport. Stuyvesant’s team, the Yorkers, will be one of the city’s eight cricket teams competing in the first New York City High School Cricket Matches on Tuesday, April 1.

According to senior and captain Sohom Datta, 20 people made the team out of around 30 that tried out. Although the team is coed, no girls tried out. Senior members of the previously established Stuyvesant Cricket Club, including Datta, Chaitanya Medicherla, and Shajan Mathew, evaluated those who tried out based on their ability to bat, bowl and field.

Somewhat similar to baseball, cricket is played on an oval field with two opposing teams of 11 players. The game progresses as the bowler (analogous to baseball’s pitcher) of one team aims to dismiss (analogous to getting out in baseball) the batters of the other team. The batter, on the other hand, intends to score as many runs as possible.

After a batter makes contact, he runs to the wickets (3 sticklike stumps located both on the batting and bowling ends, somewhat similar to the bases in baseball) on the bowler’s side of the field and back to the wickets on the batter’s side. Each touch of the wickets with the bat scores a run. He keeps scoring runs until he is dismissed by a fielder who throws the ball and hits the wickets before he hits them with his bat.

A batter can also be dismissed if he misses the bowl, or pitch, and the ball hits the wicket behind him (similar to a strikeout in baseball) or if a fielder from the other team catches the ball before it hits the ground (analogous to baseball’s fly ball out).

An inning is completed when the team that is bowling has dismissed all members of the batting team. This can take days, as has been proven by the one and two inning games played in professional cricket. This has been modified to fit the PSAL’s time constraints. “Our PSAL games will consist of 20 overs, that means 120 pitches for each team to score as many runs as possible,” sophomore Muhammad Siddiqui said. One over is equivalent to six bowls.

The teams’ outlook on the coming season is positive, although they do not know what kind of competition their rival teams will give them. “It would be great if we can make the playoffs as an inaugural Stuyvesant varsity cricket team,” said Medicherla, who, although he helped select the new team’s members, will not be playing for the cricket team because he is on the tennis team. “But then again, if we don’t, it’s perfectly fine.”

The Yorkers’ name is a reference to what Datta refers to as “an especially lethal type of bowl” that bounces very close to the batter’s feet, making it difficult to hit. He said that Stuyvesant’s team consists of many pacers, or bowlers that typically throw Yorkers. In addition, the name pays homage to their location, as they are the only PSAL team from a high school in Manhattan.

The Yorkers were thrown off guard when librarian Chris Asch, who was supposed to be their coach, abruptly left school. However, they now have a new coach, Randolph Walker, a laboratory assistant at Dewitt Clinton High School who coached cricket in Nigeria for 10 years. Their assistant coach is Dr. Hemal Pathak, a biology teacher at Stuyvesant.

The Yorkers do not expect Asch’s suspension to affect them significantly. “Asch’s suspension de-railed us by two weeks, so we started two weeks behind schedule,” Datta said. “But we’re too talented and determined to let that affect our game.”

Many members played cricket informally before this year and are looking forward to playing on a real team. “I’ve been playing cricket for a while now, but not on a large, organized level such as this,” Khan said. “As the captain, I hope we have a great, safe season.”