Bergen County park prepares to host cricket playoffsSunday, August 11, 2013 Last updated: Sunday August 11, 2013, 9:41 PM
BY LINDA MOSS
STAFF WRITER
The Record
RIDGEFIELD PARK — This weekend, Overpeck County Park hosted a warm-up for an increasingly hot sport locally: cricket.
Mustafa Moiz delivering the ball Sunday in a practice game Sunday at Overpeck County Park, in preparation for playoff and championship games the next two weekends. KEVIN R. WEXLER / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
A dozen teams, most of them of Indian descent, practiced on two soccer fields on Challenger Road at the rolling Bergen County-owned park. They were there to get the feel of the artificial turf and to scope out the grounds. Saturday and Sunday were a prelude to a tournament that kicks off next weekend, when members of this year-old cricket league will play actual matches at Overpeck. The event will be capped the following weekend, Aug. 24-25, with playoff games and the championship, respectively.
More than 1,000 spectators are expected to attend the Aug. 25 cricket finals, with extra bleachers and a Jumbotron being brought in for the occasion, Bergen County Parks Director Ron Kistner said Sunday. Indian food will also be served the championship day, which is being hailed as a family event and community fair.
The Diamond Cricket Premier League was founded last year, and had its first championship in Teaneck, said Vipul Shah, head of its eight-member committee. The informal league started out with just eight teams, but has already grown to 12, from Bergen County and New York, of 15 members each, said Kalpesh Sheth, another league committee member.
Many of the players are from the same areas of India, the city of Mumbai and the state of Gujarat. he said.
In both Bergen and Passaic counties, growing immigrant populations from Jamaica to South Asia and their offspring want to play the sport of their homelands in New Jersey. In the case of Bergen, its Indian groups are seeking to wield flat bats and enjoy their beloved cricket, to foster a sense of community and culture and to teach its children about a sport that’s foreign to America.
“Everybody loves cricket in India. … We want to promote cricket here in America,” Shah said.
In the United States, children of Indian descent see the game on TV and ask their parents about it, Shah said. With the league, which was created last year, men and their sons have a chance to play cricket.
“Fathers will never feel like they are old,” Shah said. “Kids will never feel like they don’t know the game. … It’s living India in the U.S.A.”
A member of the Bergen Cricket Legends team, Alpesh Shah [no relation to Vipul Shah], said that in former British Commonwealth counties such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, “cricket is like a religion,” adding “it has been followed so passionately, it’s unbelievable.”
Kistner came to Overpeck on Sunday to see how things were going with the cricket practices. Indian cricket teams are increasingly coming to him looking for fields to play, he said, and he usually offers county soccer fields. For example, there is one group that plays cricket at Saddle River County Park in Fair Lawn and another that plays in the Leonia section of Overpeck.
The county doesn’t have a field dedicated to cricket, and Kistner said he’d like to have one down the road. “There’s a demand for it,” he said. “Someday hopefully … I’d like to try to find some land and maybe we’ll build a county cricket field.”
Kistner didn’t know anything about cricket until recently. But now he knows the dimensions — 22 yards by 10 feet — of the cricket field’s “pitch,” or central strip, as he scouts out possible sites for one.
The league has obtained permits to play in not only Teaneck but also towns such as Fort Lee, Closter and Hackensack. The cricket league approached Kistner several months ago about using a field at Overpeck. He wasn’t sure how the artificial turf would withstand the hard tennis ball used in cricket, or the wear-and-tear of the sport. So he joined Vipul Shah and Alpesh Shah at the park’s Ridgefield Park soccer fields.
“They’re great guys,” Kistner said. “I met them down at Overpeck and we said, ‘Let’s try it.’ We bounced the ball off the turf, and it didn’t hurt the turf at all. We let them play a couple of games and they said they’d like to have a tournament.”
The cricket tournament will include games played by seniors and children. The league has hired a West Indian cricket coach from Edison to teach 40 children the sport, Sheth said.
“He comes three hours, twice a week, to practice,” Sheth said, calling it “cricket camp.”
Capturing the spirit of his league, Vipul Shah sports a baseball cap that says “AAO Khele Saath Saath.”
He translated the Indian language: “Come All, Let’s Play Together”
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