They appear on school fields like a swarm of desert locusts when the days grow longer and the sun paints the sky in the fairest of pale blues.
Across the Bay Area, Americans of Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and West Indian descent spend summer weekends engaged in the 400-year-old game of cricket.
“In India, cricket is like a religion,” said Nitin Dangodra, a member of the Bay Area Thunderbolts Cricket Club. “It runs in our blood.”
The architects of summertime in America missed this part of the mosaic as they etched romanticized portraits of afternoon ballgames, striped beach umbrellas and velvety soft-serve cones. Their Rockwellian canvases overlooked a rich tapestry of activities, including those with players dressed in cricket whites while gripping wooden bats.
The Northern California Cricket Association has been around since the 1880s, according to its website. Along with the 22-year-old Bay Area Cricket Alliance, the region has almost 100 clubs.
This is not a free-for-all backyard barbecue game like badminton and croquet. The cricketers are impassioned practitioners of bowling, batting and “sledging,” their well-established contribution to trash-talking.
Many of the players could not enjoy their summer pastime last year because of public health restrictions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Dangodra, 33, missed his first summer of cricket in two decades. While the Bay Area league cobbled together a tournament, the Thunderbolts Niners adult team dropped out of the competition because many players did not want to risk spending all day with 20 or so other competitors.
“People were scared and they didn’t want to play a team sport,” said Hardik Desai, one of the Niners’ bowlers, or pitchers.
As the Thunderbolts concluded their winter season in April they anticipated a joyous return to the summer league where matches last up to eight hours, including the all-important 60-minute break for lunch.
“This is our Sunday,” said Desai, of Fremont. “We play, we go eat, drink. That part of our life was taken away because of COVID.”
Cricket comprises two teams of 11 players each. The teams rotate batting like in baseball. But they don’t stop after nine innings, called “overs.” Summer games have 45 overs with scores in the hundreds. Another difference from baseball: Fielders do not wear gloves.
An abbreviated variation of the game with 20 overs that is called Twenty20 might become part of the professional sports landscape. Some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs hope to launch a nationwide Major Cricket League next year that would include a team in the South Bay.
In the meantime, the games scheduled this summer are serious competitions.
Dangodra, of Milpitas, said some of the teams feature former international players. That is like playing against a retired major leaguer in an adult softball league game.
“All the players here had a dream to play for their country,” Dangodra said one day at Joseph George Middle School in San Jose’s Alum Rock neighborhood.
The Thunderbolts’ Suraj Viswanathan, a USA Cricket board member from Milpitas, said clubs maintain the grounds at the schools where they play. That includes laying out the “pitch” for bowling and batting. It is a 22-yard-long rectangular green carpet with two stumps, or “wickets,” at each end.
The Thunderbolts spoke in English and Gujarati, one of India’s many languages, while preparing for a Sunday game. Add Spanish to the sweet blend of cultures once summer arrives.
The cricketers said Latinos play Sunday soccer games at some of the same locations. Once in a while, a soccer player wanders onto the field during a cricket match.
“Sometimes they have to be told to be careful because the ball is hard,” Desai said.
Just another summer scene in the Bay Area.
