Club Cricket, coming off of their best season last year, will be hosting their 11th annual Six-a-Side Cricket tournament on Lee field from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The team attributes their 11-2 record last season to the highly-skilled players they recruited at the season-opening tournament.
“The team is formed based on this tournament,” Naresh Devineni, a doctoral student in civil engineering, said. “From this event we had five or six players that we recruited last season that really made a big difference for us.”
Cricket, a ball-and-bat sport that relies on teamwork, coordination, and practice, plays a major role in the lives of many individuals around the world.
“In India it is like a religion. Everybody plays,” Hiren Badel, a master’s student in industrial engineering, said. “It’s basically like football or basketball is here.”
By promoting a social interaction through a shared interest, the sport has prompted individuals of different backgrounds to come together.
“We are all united and feel at home when we play cricket,” club cricket captain Sami Uddin said. “We don’t all speak the same language, but we are one when we play the game.”
The Club Cricket team, which participates in the Mid Atlantic Cricket Conference (MACC), anticipates about 16 teams competing in the two-day fundraising event, up from the eight teams that participated last year.
In the 2008 MACC Championships, N.C. State defeated the top-ranked team from Virginia en route to the semi-finals. The team would ultimately lose, but finished third overall out of the 24 competing teams.
“We were the best of the Eastern [division],” Badel said. “Fifty people came just to watch the game, with many of the Eastern team players cheering for N.C. State.”
Uddin, a doctoral student civil engineering, notes that money from the tournament will benefit both the club and the Association of India’s Development of Duke University. However, he also noted that the event has an underlying more important cause.
“We would really like the students to just come and learn about the game,” Uddin said. “In the past, we have been able to invite people from Australia, South Africa, and England, basically the cricket playing nations. We also currently have one player who is from the U.S.”
In addition, the team noted that the tournament hopes to provide publicity for the sport far beyond the reaches of campus.
“We are inviting teams from all over the Research Triangle Park,” Devineni said. “We’re trying to promote the sport all over the state.”
Another member of the club, Bhavaniprasad Brahmavar Hegde, a 2008 graduate in industrial engineering, is optimistic about the sport’s future.
“I think it’s improving because they are making stadiums and the U.S. even had an international team that played in the [cricket] world cup,” he said.
