noah levine

Wesleyan’s low-profile, high-power Cricket team hosted and won a game agains Middlebury Saturday. Watching the game was a first time experience for many Wesleyan students and prefrosh over WesFest weekend.

A cricket field consists of two sets of wickets--three sticks driven into the ground. The bowler stands between the wickets and tosses an overhand pitch, or "ball" to the batter, who stands in front of one set of wickets.

In cricket, an "over" is similar to an inning, in baseball. Each over consists of six balls.

The point of the game is to score as many runs as possible until a team has reached a specified number of outs. A batter is out if a hit is caught, or if the bowler hits the set of wickets behind the batter. A runner is out if the ball hits the wickets before he or she reaches them. Throwing a runner out like this is also called a wicket.

A run is scored by running between the wickets once.

In spite of light rain, Saturday’s game started on time and upon winning the toss, Wesleyan elected to bat first. A bowler-friendly pitch and wet conditions had the home team in trouble with the top five batsmen back in the pavilion before the score had reached 30.

From then on, graduate student Haribabu Arthanari (24 runs scored off 42 balls faced), ably supported by Ashvin Chadha ’02 (8 off 13), Jugjeev Duggal ’01 (16 off 9) and Vuyani Sifiniza ’02 (13 off 31) helped Wesleyan to a fighting total of 119 runs in 22 overs.

The team was three overs short of the 25 overs limit. The final score included 51 extras (wides and no-balls), thanks to some wayward bowling by Middlebury.

Middlebury’s reply got off to a slow start with Swarna Basu and Sanjai Kuman bowling accurate first spells. An early wicket by Swarna (final tally: 3 wickets for 8 runs conceded), followed by two wickets in four balls by Sifiniza(2 for 22) and another one by Duggal (1 for 22) reduced the visitors to 19 runs for five wickets. 

There was also a run-out resulting from an excellent pick-up and throw by Sifiniza. Wicket-keeper Jacob Fain ’02 knocked the stumps down with the batsman way off the mark. Accurate bowling by Wesleyan, backed up by brilliant fielding and wicketkeeping restricted Middlebury to a total of 79 runs, off 22 overs.

Zaki Choudhury ’02 took a terrific catch, diving full-length forward and Chadha (1 for 10) finished off the match with the final wicket. Sanjai (1 for 13) dismissed their best batsman who had contributed 32 runs to their total. Also playing for Wesleyan were Arnab Bhattasali ’02, and graduate students Michael Huber and S. Ranganathan. Rajesh Nagarajan fielded for some time as the reserve player.

The Wesleyan Cricket Club hoped that by successfully hosting a game , it would increase the popularity and familiarity of cricket on campus. To learn more about the Cricket Club and about cricket in general visit the team’s webpage at www.wesleyan.edu/wsa/cricket.