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Evan Schultz stepped up to the wicket Saturday night. The score was 42 to 39, and his team was down.
With three bowls left, Schultz, a skinny University student in glasses and an Empire Strikes Back T-shirt who had never played cricket before in his life, needed a four-point hit to the fences at the turf field outside the Student Recreation Center to win the cricket match.
An experienced bowler, student Suraj Yalamuri wound up at the opposite wicket 60 feet across the field. Whipping his arm over his shoulder, Yalamuri sent the wood-hard ball screaming toward Schultz. It bounced a few feet in front of him and up into the sweet spot on the broad paddle of the bat.
At the tremendous crack, the other players gasped and stood to watch the ball's flight.
It was the Students of the Indian Subcontinent's first weekly game of cricket - a sport of great cultural and political importance to Britain and its former colonies. The match drew student players from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and the U.S.
"Back home, you know, people go crazy about cricket," said Vijay Thangarasa of Sri Lanka. "People go crazy when India and Pakistan play."
Although the sport isn't as popular here and the University doesn't have a club cricket team, some of the students want to start one. For now, they play games on the turf field every Saturday.
This Saturday evening, the fields surrounding the Student Recreation Center bustled with activity - soccer, tennis, lacrosse, four different games of football and even a game of kickball.
With more than 150 people running and playing, the four students who walked onto a stretch of artificial turf that looked out onto the far bleachers of Hayward Field went largely unnoticed.
Members of the student group Students of the Indian Subcontinent, Sunny Patel, Thangarasa, Yalamuri and Schultz dropped two black duffel bags on the field and pulled out large, paddle-like bats, apple-sized leather balls hard as wood, thick pads, webbed red gloves and a set of two homemade wickets. The wickets - three hip-high lengths of PVC pipe sticking out of a shoe-sized block of wood - are roughly the equivalent of bases in cricket, a sport of great cultural and political importance to Britain, its former colonies and areas of influence.
The students set up the wickets 60 feet apart from one another and began pitching and hitting. Schultz took the bat awkwardly.
As the pitches started coming with a great deal of heat behind them, Schultz got a little freaked out.
"I'm really afraid I'll die," he said.Yalamura turned back to him and smiled. "You won't die," he said. "Just duck and cover."
After a few missed pitches blew by him into the wicket keeper's glove, Schultz turned the bat over to Suraj and decided to try his hand at catching.
Later, after a few more players wandered up, Patel took the bat. He tried a few swings, but couldn't find his pitch, so he stepped back from the wicket and put on the pads the group still had. Most of them were stolen from the office last year, and the few they have Yalamuri bought in India this summer.
Patel strapped on the only leg pad, the thickly padded gloves and headgear that looks like a riding helmet with a football mask covering its front.
He came back to the wicket, and on the first pitch cracked one out to the far fence, where Schultz was fielding. He reached his arms up to catch it but missed, and the ball bounced over the fence for a four-point score.
By the time the sun was sinking, 11 people had shown up, and as the lights flickered on over the field, the students organized a game. Schultz was picked last.
Yet he found himself last at bat.
The first ball Schultz hit flew high to the left, arched and turned downward, right toward the bare hands of fielder Sunny Patel. But for some reason, Patel missed the catch.
He quickly recovered the ball and threw it to the bowler, blocking Schultz from running bases for points.
The next pitch sailed past Schultz, leaving one pitch to win for his team. He steadied himself, breathed in and looked up to the bowler.
Yalamuri wound up and delivered a heater, right down the center. Schultz swung.
Schultz slammed the ball down the perfect open lane in left field, sending the fielder scrambling after it in a futile attempt to stop the ball in its tumble toward the fence. Ringing against the metal, the ball Schultz hit scored the final four points and his teammates rushed out to him, slapping his back and hands.
The smile on his face said he wasn't sure whether he was awake or dreaming.
Contact the freelance editor at eoser@dailyemerald.com
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