"Baseball of valium kind" in U.S.

For Hollywood star Robin Williams "cricket is like baseball played on valium."

If Williams, who has starred in blockbusters like "Mrs Doubtfire," walks into Fremont, 40 miles from San Francisco that boasts of 20,742 Indian Americans, he would see many men addicted to the "valium" (clumsiness inducing drug) of the cricket-kind.

Each weekend, men not-in-white-flannels hit the ball on wickets of varied hues. There are no proper fields, instead matting on rolled and cut turf is the most popular wicket. Other clubs have astroturf on clay, matting on clay, matting on cement, astroturf on asphalt and there is even a "turf" wicket.

But cries of "Howzzat!" are everywhere.

It is not just the matting that is different, even the teams sport fascinating names -- Bhola XI and Baslog, short for Bay Area Sloggers, and the Valley Cricketers.

All of them are affiliated to Northern California Cricket Association (NCCA), which boasts of 30 teams from 20 clubs. Approximately 700 people participate in the NCCA with teams playing weekly matches against each other.

"Cricket is really catching on in this part of Northern California," said Shyam Ramchandran, captain of the Fremont cricket team.

The NCCA consists of two leagues. The league season is a round-robin style competition where each team plays 16 games, and the team with the most points at the end is the winner. This season lasts from April to late September.

With the Indian American population increasing in California's Bay Area, so is the cricket playing community.

"We're trying to make it a fundamental part of education in the U.S.," says Malcolm Nash, a former professional cricketer who is now the Northern California Cricket Association's roving school cricket coach. "We want this to be bigger than soccer."

Nash, 53, from Glamorgan County in Wales, coaches cricket at 10 schools in Los Angeles, where he lives, and then flies to the Bay Area Thursdays and Fridays to teach the game to elementary school children at St.Patrick's in Larkspur, St. Rita's in Fairfax, and Neil Cummins School in Corte Madera.

More than 600 students in the Bay Area and 1,000 children in the Los Angeles area have taken to cricket. The NCCA started the Schools Cricket Program in January 1999 and currently six schools across the Bay Area are enrolled in it.

Coaches employed by the association coach elementary school children the art of playing cricket. Currently, about 1,500 children are playing the game as part of the physical education class.

Hemant Gandhi, CEO of Challenger Systems that had sponsored a Youth XI cricket tournament comprising youngsters in the ages 13-19 in 2000, says:"The future of cricket in the U.S. depends on how well we nurture and coach the youth here."

At times, players don the pads as good Samaritans -- the Baslog raised $7,500 during a mini tournament fundraiser for the January Gujarat quake victims. The media is also taking notice of a game that still arouses a lot of curiosity and sniggers from die-hard baseball fans.

Contrary to common perception, cricket did not catch on in the U.S. after Indians swooped down the valley during the Silicon boom.

The first cricket clubs in the U.S. were established in the 1700s, not long after they made their appearance in England. It was very popular till early 1800s when the baseball, said to be a progeny of cricket, almost obliterated it.

The first international cricket match was played between Canada and the U.S. in 1844. America's first president George Washington evidently played cricket, and statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin was a documented fan.

There are 374 paid up cricket clubs in the U.S., a number of them flaunting names like Hyderabad Dream Cricket Club, Pak Gymkhana Cricket Club, Bangladesh CC of Houston, Sachin CC, Lanka CC, Hello Pakistan CC and Desi CC.

According to last year's count, there are nearly 10,000 registered players in the U.S., one fourth of which play in the New York, New Jersey area.

So if Robin Williams pans through the nation he would see many more "on valium" than during his visit to the Lord's in England for the first time that had triggered the comment. Howzzat!

Indo-Asian News Service

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