WINFIELD - Cricket has some 2.5 billion estimated fans worldwide, but the sport that is so popular in India, Pakistan and England is widely unknown in this country.
Topendsports.com calculated that cricket has five times as many fans as baseball or basketball across the globe, but most children in the United State get little to no exposure to it, typically knowing of its existence only if they are exposed to a short unit in physical education class.
Jamie Harrison and Greg Edwards are trying to change that.
The cricket advocates started by implanting camps throughout Maryland. For the past month, Harrison and Edwards instructed kids ages 6-14 through the Winfield Rec Council Summer Youth Cricket Program once a week at Mayeski Park.
Harrison, the president of the United States Youth Cricket Association, believes cricket can have a diverse group of players because of the skill-set needed to succeed.
"In most sports in the United States when a kid walks onto the field or the court you can look at the kid based on their physicality and size and know whether they're going to be naturally good at that sport," said Harrison. "Cricket is very cerebral, though, with technique and patience and practice. Even a small player who doesn't necessarily have a lot of strength or speed can do really well at cricket."
That's because the mental aspect of cricket is critical, he said.
"It's almost like a cross between the psychology of golf and the bat and ball aspects of baseball," he said.
Most compare cricket to baseball, and of the mainstream sports in America cricket does share the most similarities with baseball.
The objective of cricket is to score more runs than the opponent by batting a ball and running around the field, although there isn't a diamond-shaped base path like baseball. Cricket also contains individual innings in which each team gets a chance to play the field and bat, but unlike baseball only two players from the team pitching play the field at a given time.
In addition to camps across Maryland, the USYCA has given cricket equipment to some of the county schools to give it more exposure and draw more youths into the camp.
This was the case for Bradley Jones, 11, of Eldersburg, who was one of the kids who attended the first year of camp. Jones said he had never played cricket until this past school year and that playing at school made him want to come out to the camp. He plans to return.
For Joshua Edwards, 9, also of Eldersburg, his family influenced him to come out to camp this year.
"My brother started doing it before me and I saw a game online and it looked cool so I decided I should try it out," he said. "I guess it is a little more challenging than baseball because in cricket there are less ways to get a batter out than in baseball."
Greg Edwards will be taking over the camp next year as Harrison will try to continue creating camps across Maryland. Edwards spoke about the plans for cricket if these camps can create some popularity for it.
"We are hoping to build up enough players that we are able to form a team," Edwards said. "Currently there are two other teams with junior players in Maryland. Hopefully if we get enough players then we can actually travel to Lutherville and Germantown and play matches against those teams."
