Don’t understand cricket? Here’s a primer, with help from Colorado teams

Littleton Tiger batters run on the wicket in between the stumps during a Colorado Cricket League match against the Denver Dynamites Saturday, June 29, 2024 at Cornerstone Park in Littleton, Colorado. (Photo by Daniel Brenner/Special to The Denver Post)

The bat hit the ball with a solid whack, sending runners scurrying. The men on the field quickly determined which teammate could make the play and cheered him on.

The ball bounced into his hands. The runners halted. They’d scored a couple runs, but nobody left the field and the batsmen quickly set up at their wickets for the next ball. The bowler considered his options.

Confused? The game was cricket, an unusual sight to most folks at Englewood’s Cornerstone Park that June morning. Onlookers  were just there to walk their dogs or play pickleball, but a few stopped and watched for a few minutes, trying to make sense of the strangely familiar, centuries-old sport.

Colorado is home to more than two dozen cricket clubs, most of them members of the Colorado Cricket League. Teams represent cities up and down the Front Range, from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, and play almost every week from April through October.

“When I first joined we had, max, 8 teams,” said Dharam Patel, 30, of the Littleton Lions Cricket Club. “Maybe 9 or 10. Now we’ve got 27 teams … . We were adding almost two to three teams a year.”

Cricket is indeed having a stateside moment: The U.S. hosted games for the men’s T20 World Cup for the first time this year, drawing 190,000 spectators according to organizers. In a shocking upset, Team USA defeated Pakistan, a powerhouse, early in the tournament.

On the heels of that success, Major League Cricket begins its second season July 5 with teams in six cities.

And in 2028, both men and women will be competing in cricket in the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, after the IOC agreed in October to reintroduce the sport. Teams will play Twenty20 cricket, a popular version of the game that lasts about three hours. Patel said the baseball-like pace could draw even more eyes to the sport.

“I think it’s just to incorporate more folks, and have more viewership,” he said. “The U.S. market is a huge market to tap into that hasn’t yet gotten exposure.”

But cricket isn’t new to sports-mad Colorado. Batsmen and bowlers have battled here for decades.

“Our club is one of the oldest clubs in Colorado,” said the Lions’ Manoj Prakasam, 42. “This is the 30th year. We have 60 active members, on three different teams within the same club.”

Prakasam and Patel said most of their players learned the sport in their home countries, with players from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Australia, Sri Lanka and Caribbean nations. But all cricketers are welcome, no matter where they’re from.

”We’ve had guys who joined our club who learned from watching YouTube videos,” Patel said, an American who learned crickett from his father.

“They know the sport is growing,” said Prakasam.

Women’s cricket is also a global phenomenon, though Colorado doesn’t have its own women’s league — yet.

Younger generations are getting into the game, as well. The Denver Youth Cricket Academy trains kids to play in the Colorado Youth Premier League.

DYCA player Anish Prusty, 14, said he started playing cricket in 2017 “just for fun,” then began playing competitively in 2022.

“The feel of winning is the best part,” Prusty said. “Even one ball can change the game.”

“There’s a lot of strategy involved, and a lot of athleticism,” said fellow DYCA member Aadit Murthy, 13. “You need physical and mental strength … . It teaches life lessons like perseverance and putting in a lot of effort.”

At Cornerstone Park in June, J.P. Watson and his son Luke, 11, brought out their camp chairs and settled in to watch the Littleton Lions face off against the Eagles of the Rockies Cricket Club.

It was a happy coincidence: Luke had just recently discovered cricket while flipping through channels at his grandparents’ and was fascinated.

“He turned on the TV and the T20 matches were on and he just sat down and started watching it,” said J.P. Watson, who’d previously encountered cricket during travels in India and Nepal.

J.P. and Luke were at the park for a separate event and stumbled upon the game.

“I was always interested in hitting and everything,” said Luke, who plays baseball. “And also I like the idea of being the pitcher.”

The two turned back to the game after a brief chat, eyes on the bowler, the wickets and the batsman in the crease.

Cricket: the (very) basics

1. Cricket has different styles of play that vary in their rules and the length of the game. Twenty20, or T20, is a popular one, with games that last about as long as an American baseball game. (No days-long “test matches” in T20.)

2. Each team has 11 players. There are two innings per game. One team bowls and fields the ball, the other team bats. The teams switch off after 20 “overs” or if 10 of the 11 batting players get out.

3. An over is a set of six balls thrown by the bowler,  or six pitches, to use baseball parlance. This means the batting team gets 120 chances to score as many points as possible.

4. A point is scored each time the batsman runs from one wicket – the trio of small poles at each end of the pitch – to the other. Huge hits that cross the field’s boundary automatically count for up to 6 points.

5. Two batsmen take turns on the pitch at the same time. When one gets out, another takes his place.

6. Outs, or “dismissals,” happen when a ball gets caught in the air — like baseball’s pop fly — or the bowling team strikes a wicket with the ball (among several other methods).

7. The team that bats first sets the score. The second team must beat that score to win.

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