Spring is in the air

Over the years, cricket in the United States has slowly been picking up steam. Played mostly by college students or recent immigrants from various parts of the British Commonwealth, the level of play is not of the highest caliber, but there is no shortage of intensity. Elsewhere on this blog I have documented one such season for a team from West Virginia University.

The New York Times recently featured cricket in its weekend section, chronicling a club cricket tournament played in Florida.

Though cricket counts its fans by the billion worldwide, the sport does not register a pulse in the United States. Of the five teams in attendance at this experimental event last weekend — Montgomery, from Maryland; Boston University; Carnegie Mellon, from Pittsburgh; the University of South Florida and the University of Miami — most exist only as social clubs. None of them have club team status, and the sport is not officially recognized by the N.C.A.A.

“This is an opportunity for us to really show athletic directors at a Division I level that cricket matters, cricket is a big sport and cricket has a marketing capability in this country,” said Sumantro Das, an all-rounder and junior at Boston University, who learned to play as a child in India.

I doubt whether cricket will ever really catch on in a major way in the US (the ICC will find a way to botch it) but it is heartening to see that it is beginning to make some inroads.

A book by Joseph O'Neill, Netherland, was recently in the running for the 2009 Man Booker Prize, too.

For my part, with each passing day as the sun sets later and later, an excitement is building in anticipation of the new season.