On Sept. 17, the WTAMU Cricket Club participated in the seventh annual W.P. Dayawansa Memorial Cricket Tournament at Texas Tech University. The club beat out 16 other teams to win the tournament.
“People didn’t know about WT [at the tournament],” Navdeep Uppal, captain of the Buff Cricket Club, said. “After we won the tournament, people started to know of WTAMU and that there’s a Buff Cricket Club.”
The club is a relatively new organization on campus. They began playing cricket last spring for fun at the tennis courts. Dr. Eddie Henderson, the dean of the College of Education, and Bill Craddock, director of Rec Sports, suggested that the group form a team.“[When we went to the tournament], we didn’t even have shirts or bats to play with but we won,” team member Sanjeev Reddy said.
The club not only won the tournament, but received all new equipment and team shirts. Although cricket may be unknown to most people, the sport is played in countries such as Sri Lanka, South Africa, Australia and India.
“It’s kind of like baseball, but it’s played very differently,” Uppal said.
There are three different ways to play the game: the day format, a type of match which is played from 9-5 p.m.; Twenty20, a type of match that is played for three hours; and the test format, which is played over five days from 9-5 p.m.
“Sports like football are only played in America, but cricket is a sport where a world championship really includes teams from around the world,” Shanal DeSilva, a graduate student from Sri Lanka, said.
There is also an American College Cricket organization that holds competitions all over the U.S. The Buff Cricket Club will be practicing hard for the ACC regionals, which will be held on a date to be determined.
“We don’t have a cricket pitch so we have to go use one in Amarillo,” Reddy said.
Occasionally, the team will also practice with the Texas Tech Raider Cricket Club or the Amarillo Indian Association.
“This game is very new, and a lot of people don’t know about it, so it’s hard to get people in,” Uppal said.
