Big Red Cricket in Qatar
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Notes from Qatar
November 21, 2008 - 12:00amBeing a student at Cornell, a prestigious Ivy League University, is definitely heartening. For someone like me, a student at Cornell’s Qatar campus, it becomes more interesting, as the college is inclined in many ways towards both the New York campuses. But being on Cornell’s Qatar campus takes away from my colleagues and me the festive atmosphere and thrill of Ivy League sports. We are reduced to the occasional browsing of Cornell sports updates; and if we do that, it is almost always because of our complete lack of awareness. But I assure you that we have kept the Ivy League tradition of sports alive, at least in a modified manner. Hopefully, you will find some comfort in the fact that we are not doing so badly either. In fact, a week back, the Big Red in Doha defeated the Texas Aggies in the Education City Cricket League final to successfully defend the Championship title. Opting to bowl first, the Aggies set up a very defensive field, but the Big Red managed to accelerate the scores half way down the match. And when the Big Red bowled, finding in-roads into the Aggies’ batting line up was easier than expected. We had thrashed the same opponents in another final earlier this year, in one of the most nail-biting finishes (victory moments available on YouTube), but this time the victory was sweeter.
Allow me to tell you how the game of cricket unfolded at WCMC-Q. It began with some professors and students playing cricket just outside the building as a source of get-together and relaxation. But two years ago, the joint interest of students at not just WCMC-Q, but also a few other American universities in Qatar, lead to the beginning of some friendly cricket matches. Not much has changed since then, except that cricket is now played as an official tournament that features Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Texas A&M, Cornell and others. And, proudly, Cornell has won the two tournaments so far.
There’s something hiding behind the victories, though. Unlike the lush green of the beautiful Arts Quad in Ithaca (I have heard some play cricket there), the cricket in our league is played in an open air parking lot that’s empty on weekends. But I guess it doesn’t matter when the spirit is at peak! Initially, the turnout of spectators for the matches was also quite low, but this has seen some improvement of late. With the student body at WCMC-Q and the student affairs department helping extensively with the funding of the matches, the interest and the spectator base has also increased.
The biggest challenge so far has been in getting spectators sit for the whole length of the game — some four or five hours long. Add to that the ubiquitous problem of understanding how the game progresses. If I were to tell you something about cricket, I would say it is similar to baseball, but that would be dastardly wrong, and yet the best short description of the game. This is being resolved as more and more are showing interest in learning how the game is played. Even the TAs who come from Ithaca campus have started to enjoy the sport, and, as a matter of fact, we even had three TAs on our team last tournament. That aside, we hope that cricket is promoted in Ithaca, and that the Big Red team does Cornell proud. We would surely love to follow every match then, and extend our support while we would try to maintain the Big Red Cricket force in Qatar.