Cricket gains interest across the U.S. as Baton Rouge’s cricket faithful vie for championship

For Louisiana’s cricket faithful, the recent interest in the sport comes as no surprise.

The bat-and-ball game is considered the second-most popular sport in the world — behind only soccer, but few in this country understand its rules or lingo.

However, for the first time, the U.S. has been invited to play in the Cricket World Cup — and on June 6, the U.S. beat Pakistan, a cricket powerhouse who won the Cricket World in 1992 and has been in the running for the championship time and time again.

The big win seemed to light a fuse of national interest in cricket. The team advances to the Super 8, a round-robin stage with eight teams competing for the semifinals.

The U.S. will play South Africa on June 19, West Indies on June 22, and either England or Scotland on June 23, with four teams advancing to the semifinals in Barbados set for June 29.

In Baton Rouge, a devoted few cricket enthusiasts are ecstatic about the country’s newfound interest, and they want newbies to the sport to have proper context.

Points to better understand cricket include:

• There are three versions of the game. The World Cup games are the shortest version of the game, the T20, which lasts about 3.5 hours. The second version of a cricket game lasts about 7 hours. The third version lasts for five days.
• Each version of the game has different rules for inning play. In the T20 version, each team gets one at bat, with 120 pitches or 10 outs (wickets), whichever comes first. 
• Players in the field try to catch the ball for an out.
• Two umpires call the game.
• The person who throws the ball to the batsman is called a “bowler.” The bowler’s arm has to make a full 360-degree motion.
• When a batsman hits the ball in the air out of the field, six runs are scored. 
• Players catch the cricket ball, which is 25-30% heavier than a baseball, barehanded — with no mits. 
• In the T20 version, each team gets one at-bat, with 120 balls or 10 outs, whichever comes first. (The other versions have different numbers of balls, innings and outs.)

“Cricket is a game that swings from one way to the other very rapidly,” Capazorio said. “It’s not a game you can call early on — that’s one of the beauties of the game. I don’t think there’s any other sport that can change quickly.”

Save a few weeks in the peak of summer, Capazorio and a group of local men play cricket almost every weekend, usually at Woodlawn Acres Park, a no-nonsense park at the end of a dead-end street in east Baton Rouge. 

Though things can get technical depending on the level of play, one of the best things about cricket is the game’s flexibility in where it can be played. Almost any wide, open field can be made into a cricket field. The game requires minimal equipment — a ball, a bat, two stakes and simple markers to denote the edge of play. Depending on what type of ball is being used, players need protective equipment to prevent injury.

Despite the rain Sunday, Baton Rouge’s Gujarat Lions Cricket Club played a team from Mississippi in the semifinals of the Louisiana Cricket Association at Woodlawn Acres Park. The game lasted most of the day without a spectator in sight.

Even with the rain delay and no cheering fans, the teams approached the game and played with an intensity worthy of an international championship. 

Reflecting the roots of cricket’s global popularity in the Indian subcontinent, most, if not all, of Sunday’s players were from that area of the world. 

“The majority of our players are from the Indian subcontinent,” said long-time cricket player Mridul Desai, a 50-year-old chemical engineer.

Uzair Javed, who scored 82 runs in Sunday’s game, took a breather as his team took the field to play defense.

Javed, originally from Pakistan, said at first he was disheartened in his home country’s loss to the U.S., but he acknowledged that the U.S. played really well.

“It seems like everything went their way,” Javed said. “Plus, the thing is, you have to, when you get an opportunity, you have to avail it.”

Javed moved to Baton Rouge from Mobile in 2022 to open a jewelry business. 

And what does the local cricket league mean to Javed?

“Oh, everything. It means everything. After work stuff and family stuff, it’s cricket,” Javed said. “This is the thing that lets us get our stress out.”

Desai calls himself an “avid supporter” of all things cricket and still plays occasionally. 

He moved to Baton Rouge in 1989 when he was 14 in the days before the internet.

“I was detached from my friends,” Desai said. “I didn’t really have many friends here until I started playing cricket. It kind of brings everybody together out there. Winning and losing isn’t as important.”

The cricket players gather and make a day of it by doing cookouts at the park after the games.

“It’s like going to LSU for a tailgate, but we do it almost every weekend. As much as we enjoy winning, we get to spend with our friends,” Desai said. “It’s the camaraderie of cricket that brings people together.”

On Sunday, after a mid-morning start and a lengthy rain delay, the game against Mississippi finally ended about 3:15 p.m.

What did Desai and his friends do once the game was over?

“We stayed for about two more hours enjoying ourselves,” he said.

He and his 18-year-old play on Saturdays in a version of cricket that uses a hard tennis ball. 

“I hope more people learn the game here, but at the same time we are going to be enjoying ourselves because we love it so much,” Desai said.

The Baton Rouge Cricket Association plans to have a workshop this fall as a part of BREC to teach those unfamiliar with the sport its rules and techniques. 

“It’s a social game. It’s a wonderful game,” Capazorio said. “We invite people to come out to Woodlawn Acres to see for themselves.”

The Gujarat Lions Cricket Club is scheduled to play the Lafayette Cricket Club for the league T20 championship starting at 9:30 a.m. June 30.