New York:
On July 18, 1886, The New York Times -- as it often did in those pocket-watch-and-frock-coat days -- reported on a cricket match, a big one, played between the Staten Island Cricket Club and a visiting squad from Merion, Pa. The occasion was the debut competition at the Staten Island field, although, by all accounts, it was a miserable display.
Not one member of the Merion team managed to post a score in the double digits, and even by the end of one full inning, fewer than 80 runs -- a disastrous performance -- had been made. "Neither team," the disappointed Times reporter sniffed, "was fairly representative."
After that embarrassing exhibition, the field on Staten Island might have suffered the fate that would eventually consume more legendary ballparks, like the Polo Grounds in Harlem or Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. It did not; late last month, in fact, a remarkable, if quiet, blow was struck for the intransigence of Staten Island cricket. The same two teams, in their batting pads and boonie caps and ageless Slazenger field whites, stepped out again onto the pitch and reprised the historic game.
It was, as people said all day, approaching the 125th year of continual cricket at the field, once a portion of the Delafield estate but now owned by the city and known as Walker Park. The players who came out that day were not the British officers of yore, but Bangladeshi cabbies, Indian computer engineers and a Pakistani man who owns an auto-body shop. The Ladies' Outdoor Amusement Club was not on hand to administer refreshments. Instead, there was D.J. Ralphie, of the so-called Chutney Bastards, blasting rowdy soca from a laptop.
"This is a momentous occasion," said Clarence Modeste, president of the Staten Island squad. Mr. Modeste, a tall, slim man who is 80 and a native of Tobago, recognized the afternoon with a heartfelt introduction delivered to the teams, both dressed in their blazers and lined up facing one another on the field.
"We feel very strongly not only about our club," Mr. Modeste said, "but also about our park. For us to have survived in the wandering world that is cricket in New York" -- and here he shook his head above his microphone -- "it is quite an amazing feat."
Walker Park -- or Randolph Walker Park, as it is formally known -- sits on the northern coast of Staten Island near the Kill Van Kull. A rugby-striped pavilion had been set up on the grass for those who cared to watch. Closer to the clubhouse, the official scorers sat at a table in the incompetent shade of an elm tree. The afternoon was hot; there was no sign of a breeze. Still, people picnicked, families sat on blankets, children ran elatedly amok.
The event began a little late -- an hour late, in fact (it was "cricket time," as everybody called it) -- with warm-ups, ceremonial photographs and a brief welcome by Thomas A. Paulo, the Staten Island commissioner of parks. The Merion men -- corporate lawyers, portfolio managers, civil engineers -- arrived from Pennsylvania, saying what a thrill it was to finally enjoy a game away. Their clubhouse is a gorgeous, gabled structure with a Wimbledonian grandeur, and everyone wants to play there.
The home team's clubhouse was a slightly different matter. Its locker room seemed to have been modeled on the boxing gym in "Rocky." A sign in the men's room said (with a meaningful use of quotes), " 'Gents,' please flush when you're done."
As for the field, it was not exactly up to test match standards. A baseball diamond violated one end; overhanging branches intruded on another. Near the deep square leg position ran the ugly metal links of city fencing. The grass was mottled like a skin rash. In between the treetops, one could spot construction cranes rising from the maritime concerns a block away.
"Comparatively speaking, it's one of the better fields in New York City," said an optimistic Mr. Modeste. Then he added, "Not that that means a hell of a lot."
Still, it was here where the club was re-established, in 1886, after giving up its old home near the Staten Island Ferry. Founded in March 1872 as the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club, the team was originally composed of 30 or 40 members of the British armed forces who had immigrated to America. Some of them helped buy the new ground, about five acres, for the astronomical Gilded Age sum of $40,000.
Throughout the 19th century, The Times and other papers reported on city cricket as though it were a universe as crucial to urban life as Washington or Wall Street. Countless games were covered, usually accompanied by analyses and box scores.
In January 1886, The Times dispatched a reporter to the Maritime Exchange, where the club's subcommittee for acquisitions was meeting to discuss the new purchase. He returned with details that seem to have been culled from an article on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation: "The club will be incorporated to enable $15,000 to be raised on bonds, $10,000 of which will be used to put the grounds in order and the other $5,000 as a cash installment."
The game began at 2 p.m. or so. Merion batted first. The players came out swinging poorly. The real event was the banter off the field.
Bill Fullilove, 85, and a former member of the Staten Island team, recalled how in his own days, in the early 1960s, the squad was "mainly British Commonwealth with a sprinkling of Indians." Now, he said, "it's almost entirely Asian." (Mr. Fullilove also explained the Staten Island motto, "Lude Ludum Insignia Secundaria," which translates roughly to "Winning matters less than playing the game.")
To those raised on the narratives of baseball (hit the pitch into the outfield, run around the bases, hurry back toward home), cricket can feel aimless and dispersed. Its rhythms are iterative, not progressive; its fielders play in a circle, not along the axes of a diamond; its batters scamper back and forth between wickets, not around bases. There are stretches when -- at least to the untrained eye -- it seems as if there is little going on.
Of course, that helps to emphasize the evaporative qualities of a passing summer day. It was mentioned often that the game of cricket is largely incidental to the experience of cricket: the muggy heat; the wide, unfocused minutes; the smacked-cheek sound a bat makes when it slaps against a ball; the lazy open greenness of the field.
At 4:45, it was time for midgame tea. This acutely English tradition was made a little less so by the presence of D.J. Ralphie, who hollered through his speakers -- "Yo, let's make some noiiiiiise here!" -- as the players retreated off the field.
They stepped inside the clubhouse. Teacups had been set out on a table next to tinfoil trays of apples. There were doughnuts, cakes, lemonades and mucilaginous sandwiches of carrot, egg and beetroot. There were also -- if you did not overtly advertise the fact -- fresh-chilled bottles of beer.
The second half of the match, accelerated by these non-city-approved refreshments, passed a little quicker than the first. Staten Island crushed the ball. They won by a score of 192 to 191.
To celebrate, some of the players danced. They moved their bodies in ridiculous positions; others stuck their fingers or their elbows in the air. Most of this could be blamed on D.J. Ralphie and the percussive exhortations of his music: "Tonight I'ma let you be the captain. ... Giddyup! Giddyup! Giddyup, Babe!"
By 7, they had all sat down for dinner in the clubhouse, a low-beamed room where two long tables stretched between a pair of empty hearths. Chicken curry, garbanzo beans, split peas over rice: All of it was served on paper plates. Merion sat mixed with Staten Island; a bankruptcy lawyer shared shots of brandy with a drunken Trinidadian man. Somebody was sent off on a beer run -- then, suddenly, Prosecco appeared. The air of an occasion creased the room. Mr. Modeste got up to give a toast.
He said that in the 1880s and early 1890s one played cricket here at Walker Park "unfettered by baseball." It was not so today, of course, but then that hardly mattered. The point was in the play, he said, in the feeling of camaraderie that filled this very room.
Lude Ludum Insignia Secundaria.
Mr. Modeste presented his opponents with a plaque. On it was engraved, "Staten Island v. Merion: 1886-2010."
Not one member of the Merion team managed to post a score in the double digits, and even by the end of one full inning, fewer than 80 runs -- a disastrous performance -- had been made. "Neither team," the disappointed Times reporter sniffed, "was fairly representative."
After that embarrassing exhibition, the field on Staten Island might have suffered the fate that would eventually consume more legendary ballparks, like the Polo Grounds in Harlem or Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. It did not; late last month, in fact, a remarkable, if quiet, blow was struck for the intransigence of Staten Island cricket. The same two teams, in their batting pads and boonie caps and ageless Slazenger field whites, stepped out again onto the pitch and reprised the historic game.
It was, as people said all day, approaching the 125th year of continual cricket at the field, once a portion of the Delafield estate but now owned by the city and known as Walker Park. The players who came out that day were not the British officers of yore, but Bangladeshi cabbies, Indian computer engineers and a Pakistani man who owns an auto-body shop. The Ladies' Outdoor Amusement Club was not on hand to administer refreshments. Instead, there was D.J. Ralphie, of the so-called Chutney Bastards, blasting rowdy soca from a laptop.
"This is a momentous occasion," said Clarence Modeste, president of the Staten Island squad. Mr. Modeste, a tall, slim man who is 80 and a native of Tobago, recognized the afternoon with a heartfelt introduction delivered to the teams, both dressed in their blazers and lined up facing one another on the field.
"We feel very strongly not only about our club," Mr. Modeste said, "but also about our park. For us to have survived in the wandering world that is cricket in New York" -- and here he shook his head above his microphone -- "it is quite an amazing feat."
Walker Park -- or Randolph Walker Park, as it is formally known -- sits on the northern coast of Staten Island near the Kill Van Kull. A rugby-striped pavilion had been set up on the grass for those who cared to watch. Closer to the clubhouse, the official scorers sat at a table in the incompetent shade of an elm tree. The afternoon was hot; there was no sign of a breeze. Still, people picnicked, families sat on blankets, children ran elatedly amok.
The event began a little late -- an hour late, in fact (it was "cricket time," as everybody called it) -- with warm-ups, ceremonial photographs and a brief welcome by Thomas A. Paulo, the Staten Island commissioner of parks. The Merion men -- corporate lawyers, portfolio managers, civil engineers -- arrived from Pennsylvania, saying what a thrill it was to finally enjoy a game away. Their clubhouse is a gorgeous, gabled structure with a Wimbledonian grandeur, and everyone wants to play there.
The home team's clubhouse was a slightly different matter. Its locker room seemed to have been modeled on the boxing gym in "Rocky." A sign in the men's room said (with a meaningful use of quotes), " 'Gents,' please flush when you're done."
As for the field, it was not exactly up to test match standards. A baseball diamond violated one end; overhanging branches intruded on another. Near the deep square leg position ran the ugly metal links of city fencing. The grass was mottled like a skin rash. In between the treetops, one could spot construction cranes rising from the maritime concerns a block away.
"Comparatively speaking, it's one of the better fields in New York City," said an optimistic Mr. Modeste. Then he added, "Not that that means a hell of a lot."
Still, it was here where the club was re-established, in 1886, after giving up its old home near the Staten Island Ferry. Founded in March 1872 as the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club, the team was originally composed of 30 or 40 members of the British armed forces who had immigrated to America. Some of them helped buy the new ground, about five acres, for the astronomical Gilded Age sum of $40,000.
Throughout the 19th century, The Times and other papers reported on city cricket as though it were a universe as crucial to urban life as Washington or Wall Street. Countless games were covered, usually accompanied by analyses and box scores.
In January 1886, The Times dispatched a reporter to the Maritime Exchange, where the club's subcommittee for acquisitions was meeting to discuss the new purchase. He returned with details that seem to have been culled from an article on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation: "The club will be incorporated to enable $15,000 to be raised on bonds, $10,000 of which will be used to put the grounds in order and the other $5,000 as a cash installment."
The game began at 2 p.m. or so. Merion batted first. The players came out swinging poorly. The real event was the banter off the field.
Bill Fullilove, 85, and a former member of the Staten Island team, recalled how in his own days, in the early 1960s, the squad was "mainly British Commonwealth with a sprinkling of Indians." Now, he said, "it's almost entirely Asian." (Mr. Fullilove also explained the Staten Island motto, "Lude Ludum Insignia Secundaria," which translates roughly to "Winning matters less than playing the game.")
To those raised on the narratives of baseball (hit the pitch into the outfield, run around the bases, hurry back toward home), cricket can feel aimless and dispersed. Its rhythms are iterative, not progressive; its fielders play in a circle, not along the axes of a diamond; its batters scamper back and forth between wickets, not around bases. There are stretches when -- at least to the untrained eye -- it seems as if there is little going on.
Of course, that helps to emphasize the evaporative qualities of a passing summer day. It was mentioned often that the game of cricket is largely incidental to the experience of cricket: the muggy heat; the wide, unfocused minutes; the smacked-cheek sound a bat makes when it slaps against a ball; the lazy open greenness of the field.
At 4:45, it was time for midgame tea. This acutely English tradition was made a little less so by the presence of D.J. Ralphie, who hollered through his speakers -- "Yo, let's make some noiiiiiise here!" -- as the players retreated off the field.
They stepped inside the clubhouse. Teacups had been set out on a table next to tinfoil trays of apples. There were doughnuts, cakes, lemonades and mucilaginous sandwiches of carrot, egg and beetroot. There were also -- if you did not overtly advertise the fact -- fresh-chilled bottles of beer.
The second half of the match, accelerated by these non-city-approved refreshments, passed a little quicker than the first. Staten Island crushed the ball. They won by a score of 192 to 191.
To celebrate, some of the players danced. They moved their bodies in ridiculous positions; others stuck their fingers or their elbows in the air. Most of this could be blamed on D.J. Ralphie and the percussive exhortations of his music: "Tonight I'ma let you be the captain. ... Giddyup! Giddyup! Giddyup, Babe!"
By 7, they had all sat down for dinner in the clubhouse, a low-beamed room where two long tables stretched between a pair of empty hearths. Chicken curry, garbanzo beans, split peas over rice: All of it was served on paper plates. Merion sat mixed with Staten Island; a bankruptcy lawyer shared shots of brandy with a drunken Trinidadian man. Somebody was sent off on a beer run -- then, suddenly, Prosecco appeared. The air of an occasion creased the room. Mr. Modeste got up to give a toast.
He said that in the 1880s and early 1890s one played cricket here at Walker Park "unfettered by baseball." It was not so today, of course, but then that hardly mattered. The point was in the play, he said, in the feeling of camaraderie that filled this very room.
Lude Ludum Insignia Secundaria.
Mr. Modeste presented his opponents with a plaque. On it was engraved, "Staten Island v. Merion: 1886-2010."
Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world
