If you had asked Brandon Lee four years ago what he planned on doing in college, the last thing he would have said was cricket.
One afternoon, after a long day of classes, a single flier greeted Lee outside of his dorm room. It was an odd piece of paper, but even more strange was Lee’s fascination with it. He could not explain why he went to the cricket team meeting, but he did just that. Four years later, he’s still going.
Though largely unnoticed, a club cricket team does exist at the University. Its members can be seen on the turf fields next to the Student Recreation Center, playing what appears to be “Twilight Zone” baseball.
Cricket is not all that different from America’s pastime. Imagine a baseball diamond. Now destroy the stands behind home plate and along the first and third baselines, making the field into a giant oval. Level the pitching mound, uproot all the bases, fill the base paths with grass, add two more fielders, add another batter, stab six sticks into the ground (wickets), replace the bat with a two-by-four and the baseball with a miniature red bowling ball and allow the pitcher to sprint in from center field to chuck the ball at the batter. Not so different, after all.@@Lovely depiction@@
Unfortunately for Lee, he had some difficulties when he first started playing.
“It took me about a month to grasp what I was trying to do and I still don’t know all of the rules,” Lee says. “I mean, there’s seven ways to get a man out.”
Lee still can’t explain why he looked at that flier or why he showed up for the first practice.
“The first time I came up to bat, I don’t think I even hit the ball once,” Lee says. “It was definitely a new experience, but I enjoyed it. I don’t specifically know why I kept coming, but it was one of those things I just decided to do on my weekends.”
His learning curve might be attributed to the fact that he didn’t grow up playing baseball, or any sport with a bat and ball, for that matter.
Growing up in Washington, he used to watch the Sounders, the SuperSonics, the Blazers and the Mariners. However, he didn’t actually play those sports. In high school, Lee ran cross country and skied, two largely solitary sports. It wasn’t until discovering his inexplicable love for cricket in college that he got a true taste of team sports.
What’s even more peculiar, however, is that the opportunity to play the sport might have been lost were it not for his friend and former coordinator, Daniel Mundra.
Mundra, a former science graduate and current programmer for the University, brought cricket back to the University in 2006. His goal was to keep his childhood sport alive and well within the University, as well as the Northwest.
“Brandon embodied what I had hoped for from students,” Mundra says. “He showed a great interest in learning the game of cricket from day one.”
Mundra graduated a couple years later and sure enough, he selected Lee to take over the cricket club. As coordinator, Lee schedules practices, reserves field space, manages equipment and works with the Oregon Cricket League to schedule games and exhibitions. Much of their budget goes into equipment and uniforms — which can run over $300 — along with travel expenses and reserving fields.
Scheduling cricket games in Oregon is not as difficult as one might think. The OCL has a competitive league with 10 teams, and that number doesn’t include the University’s club team or Oregon State’s and Portland State’s teams. There are awards, championships, sponsors and even youth camps all across the state.
Lee is one of the few Americans and also one of the few Caucasians on the cricket team. This presents a stark difference to his hometown of Bellingham, which is 87 percent white. Despite his enormous cultural difference compared with the other foreign players, they all speak a shared language of cricket.@@This seems redundant/unnecessary. Do we really need to know that no white people play University cricket?@@
“We’re all friends and guys will talk and shout in Hindi and other languages out on the field,” Lee says. “But every once in a while, one of them will say something that they choose not to translate.”
In all of his training and playing with the team, Lee has moved himself up the ladder and has reached the hallowed ground of “respectable.” This will be his last year as coordinator though, because he wants to concentrate more on graduating with a degree in environmental studies next year. It’s been a long and considerably bewildering journey, but through it all he’s become a reliable batsman, catcher and — most importantly — teammate.