The Amherst College cricket team, a club team on campus, played the Babson College Beavers on Saturday, in its first-ever intercollegiate match. Babson won the first game between the two teams in dominating fashion, but the Jeffs rebounded for a close loss in the second game, before pulling off a dramatic upset in the final game of the day. Anirudh Rajashekar ’10 was proud of the team’s resilience. “At first we seemed intimidated by them, but we gained confidence after Umang [Dua ’09] batted so well in the second game, and we carried that into the final game,” he said.

The Cricket Team, new to Amherst, brims with international flavor. The team’s best players grew up in India, a reflection of the sport’s popularity on the subcontinent, but Edward Muguza ’11 hails from Zimbabwe, where the sport challenges soccer in popularity. Indians make up the majority of the Babson team as well, with Rajashekar and Ali Khan ’08 competing against high-school teammates of theirs. Khan was excited about bringing cricket to a country where it remains relatively unknown. “In Bombay, where I’m from, cricket is more than just a game­—it’s a religion,” he said. “And it’s an incredible thrill to step out on the field to bat or bowl­—even in Massachusetts.”

The simplicity of the rules of cricket is one of the virtues of the game, and one of the main reasons cricket has established itself at Amherst. One team gets as many runs as it can on a given number of pitches, which are called bowls, before it is the other team’s turn; the other team then tries to outdo the first team’s total.

In the final game of the day, the Jeffs’ lone win, Amherst batted in 63 runs on their allotted 60 bowls, led by Dua and Ben Bishop ’09. The Beavers appeared confident that they could top that total, but their mood quickly soured after Rajashekar showed his bowling mettle. He quickly got out Babson’s top two batsmen, one on an incredible reflexive catch and the other on a great spin bowl (akin to a curveball). “Once [Rajashekar] bowled out their best players, we knew we had them. We got great fielding from Muguza, and then Umang finished with some beautiful bowling,” explained Saahil Sud ’10, who also excelled in the field.

The Babson match is only the beginning for the team, as they hope to compete against Yale University later this year, as well as Haverford College, the only school in America with a varsity cricket team. Added Khan, “Our goal is to play, train and compete more regularly. But we also want to establish the game of cricket in the Amherst community. And the success of folks like Ben Bishop have shown that it’s never too late to learn.”