sports Long Innings The crimson Cricket Club, bowling and batting

ction in cricket, as in baseball, which means that any starts with a ball thrown to a bat- contact with the bat puts Ibrahim Khan ’14 talks ter. But in cricket, everything else the ball in play, no matter strategy with teammates before a game against happens faster: the bowler— whether it goes up, down, Boston University in May. Acricket’s version of a pitcher—gets a run- forward, or backward. A ning start, and even in recreational games ball in flight that reaches (or goes over) a full-length version of the game, in which the ball often heads toward the batsman, off perimeter fence is good for six runs. One matches can stretch across days. a hop, at faster than 90 miles per hour. And that reaches a fence off a bounce counts for But the games still aren’t short. A typi- it often heads right at the batsman: hitting four. For singles, doubles, and triples, both cal T-20 match lasts three hours, struc- your opponent as he guards the wicket is the batsman (and his partner, called the tured around two halves, which are called one of the surest ways to retire him. runner, who is stationed near the wicket innings. Each innings (the word is always “Attack, that’s the name of the game,” where the bowler lets fly his delivery) plural) features 20 overs; each over con- says Ibrahim Khan ’14, the most recent co- must run back and forth between wickets sists of six deliveries, or pitches, by the founder of the Harvard Cricket Club. “You without being thrown out. bowler. And this is where the appellation need to score rapidly.” And in twenty- Wickets, two sets of three bamboo T-20, or 20-20, comes from: 20 overs per twenty (T-20), the scaled-down version sticks placed 22 yards apart, are inte- innings, two innings per game. Scorekeep- of cricket usually played at American col- gral to the game: not only do they mark ing, no surprise, is a major effort. leges, batsmen face fewer deliveries, mean- the distance a runner has to travel—like Khan, an applied mathematics and ing they’re rewarded for aggressive batting bases, in baseball—but if the opposing economics concentrator from Kirkland even more than in the professional version team’s bowler or a fielder hits one with a House, learned the game while grow- of the game. ball during play, the batsman is dismissed ing up in his native Lahore, Pakistan, but To score runs, a batting team tries to and replaced. All of that gives the sport, had not played seriously before coming smack the ball past the 11 players on the and especially T-20, a much quicker pace to Cambridge, owing to a cricket injury opposing team. There are no foul balls, than both its American cousin and the sustained as a young kid. “I got hit in the head,” he says. “Ever since then, my parents have always been a little bit paranoid about cricket.” For years, he played a recreational version, with tennis balls covered in tape and no pads, but once at Harvard, he decided to revive its cricket club—originally founded in 1868, it existed on and off un- til 2009—at the end of his fresh- man year. He recruited a group of cricket fans in the fall of 2011 (all but one regular club mem- ber grew up in a Commonwealth country, or has parents who did), and for several months they played with tennis balls indoors at the Malkin Athletic Center. This year, they graduated to the real game, with proper equip- ment—leg pads and helmets for Sher Afgan Tareen, M.T.S. ’13, bowls to a BU batsman at Jordan Field. batsmen, and heavier leather-cov- ered balls—and began practicing and playing at Jordan Field, home www.gocrimson.com Photographs by Stu Rosner

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to Harvard’s field-hockey squad. confines make balls hit to the left or right Lauderdale in March. There, playing in the Last spring, at a student-faculty dinner, much more likely to reach the fence. That’s only full-size cricket stadium in the coun- Khan was chatting with Stephen Blyth, one reason why batting strategy—wheth- try, they went up against some of the best Ph.D. ’92, managing director of the Har- er to attack with a full or checked swing, college cricket competitors from among vard Management Company and profes- when to block a ball headed at the wicket, the 70-odd teams that play under the um- sor of the practice in statistics. Blyth, who and whether to hit to the left or right—is brella of the ACC. Their matches didn’t go grew up in Great Britain, played cricket a key part of the game. Likewise, a smart as well as Khan had hoped—several play- for the club in the late 1980s. (Cricket, he bowler will watch a batsman’s habits ers were exhausted after driving nonstop says, “is the first thing that an Englishman and adjust his deliveries. “You can notice from Cambridge to Florida—but they re- and a Pakistani would talk about.”) Blyth where the batsman likes to go,” Khan says. bounded to score more than 200 runs at soon agreed to be their faculty adviser; Last fall, the club won its first five home in the final game of the season, losing under American College Cricket rules, he games, then dropped six straight, and only narrowly to Dartmouth. Next school is even allowed to participate in games if finished with a 6-9 overall record. But the year, Khan hopes to improve on the team’s the team is short-handed. (When he plays, cricketers played well at the New England top-15 national ranking. The challenge will he’s among the club’s best batsmen.) regional tournament organized by Ameri- be getting more of the club’s two dozen In competitive matches, teams often can College Cricket (ACC), the sport’s casual members to show up consistently score more than 150 runs. They can score national governing body, and earned a for practices and games. “Planning,” he even more at Jordan Field: its narrow spot at the national tournament in Fort says, “is in full force.” vpeter vigneron

Andy Sharpless on Easter Island. He predicts that proposed restrictions on fishing will help regenerate marine life in the surround- ing waters within a decade.

Alumni ertheless arrive daily to see the famous carved-stone human figures, calledmoai, that dot the landscape. The ancient stat- ues are impressive, Sharpless says. But so Fish by Fish are signs of the island’s current environ- mental problems—and its historic legacy as a man-made ecological disaster. “No fish Oceana aims to restore the oceans’ health. jumped out of the water,” Sharpless notes. The once abundant forests and plant life are long gone, along with the island’s im- n a recent trip to Eas- life throughout Chile’s coastal waters and portant role as a major rookery for sea- ter Island, Oceana CEO Andy fisheries—and is now pushing to curb over- birds. During a 12-mile hike over scrubby Sharpless ’77, J.D. ’86, took a fishing around the famous island, a Chilean ground strewn with volcanic rocks, “We hike along the coast. The con- special territory. saw only two tiny forests, maybe a half- Oservation group he runs has helped over- It is the most isolated inhabited place acre each,” Sharpless says. “We also saw haul national laws to better protect marine on earth, where hundreds of tourists nev- two birds, neither of which was native:

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