Members of Roselle Park Warriors were recognized at the May 3rd Mayor & Council meeting by the governing body.
Although cricket is not that well-known in Roselle Park nor America, it is the second most popular sport in the world with an estimated third of the world’s population – around 2.5 billion people – playing the game. It was popular in the United States during the early years of America until baseball became the national pastime.
The centuries-old sport had its origins in Europe with it being formalized into a structured sport with rules and laws over 13 score ago in 1744. It spread throughout the world via the countries that were under rule of the empire of Great Britain. The name is most likely derived from the Old English cryce, which means “stick”.
Here is a very basic rundown of cricket.
The game is played between two (2) teams of 11 players each – and one additional reserve member known as the twelfth man – with a bat, ball, and two wickets on a rectangular strip of the field – called the pitch – in the center of an oval field. Wickets are each constructed of three wooden posts – or stumps – with two smaller sticks, called bails, placed along the top between the stumps and are placed at each end of the pitch.
The game is made up of two innings with each team taking turns batting and bowling. Two umpires call the game while a third umpire makes decisions on too close to call plays. Umpires notify scorers who score the game.
Each team has a captain and at the beginning of the match, a coin is tossed to decide who will bat or bowl first. The batting team sends two batters out to the field – batters always bat in pairs – and the bowling team sends all 11 players out.
The batter stands in front of the wicket to protect it while the bowler tries to hit the wicket with the ball. The bowler bowls the ball to the batter, who tries to hit it and if successful runs to the other end of the pitch and back as many times as possible before the ball is returned.
If the batter hits the ball to the boundary of the oval field, they automatically score four runs. If they hit the ball over the boundary without it touching the ground they automatically score six runs.
Single runs can also be scored if the bowler bowls the ball high, wide, or bowls a no-ball and steps over a line called the ‘crease’.
Other ways the runs can be scored according to the cricket rules include no balls, wide balls, byes & leg byes. Cricket rules state that all runs scored by these methods are awarded to the batting team but not the individual batters.
There are many other aspects of cricket along with terms including ‘Legs Before Wicket’, ‘run out’, and ‘stumped’.
Although the game has more rules than most, it has been growing in popularity, even Roselle Park.
Started some years ago with a group of Roselle Park cricket enthusiasts playing at Roselle Park High School, they became a formalized cricket club called the Roselle Park Warriors in 2014 and joined the New Jersey Softball Cricket League (NJSBCL). The league consists of 120 teams with over 2,500 registered players. The Roselle Park Warriors were runner-up in Division 2 the first year they joined the NJSBCL and were then promoted to Dvision 1.
They now play out of Kawameeh Park (map link) in Union Township but with many of their players either current of former residents of the borough, the over two dozen players take to the field as the Roselle Park Warriors. Their 2018 season started last month and will be playing throughout the summer.
At the presentation, team captain Ajanthan ‘AJ’ Elanganthan spoke on behalf of his players, “On behalf of [the] Warriors team, I am extremely grateful to the Roselle Park mayor and council for hosting us this evening . . . We hope that we can continue to play this great sport for many years to come and [all] youngsters to be introduced to this unique sport down the road.”
During the ceremony there was talk of setting up an exhibition game to be played in the near future somewhere in the borough to give residents a real-life taste of the game played by almost one out of every three people on the planet.
The members of the Roselle Park Warriors recognized were:
- Ajanthan “AJ” Elanganthan
- Chintan Kamdar
- Sandeep Mathai
- Ramesh Nadarasa
- Nayan Nayee
- Parth Pastagia
- Jay Patel
- Nikhil Patel
- Ronak Patel
- Shalin Patel
- Vikul Rajpara
- Ishan Shah
- Nirmal Shah
- Parth Shah
- Prarthit Shah
- Supan Shah
- Amritpal Singh
- Ravi Singh
- Shubham Singh
- Sukhwinder Singh
- Taran Singh
- Akash Thind
- Utsav Upadhyay
More information on the Roselle Park Warriors’ 2018 roster and season can be found on the NJSBCL website (schedule link) (team link).
The United States of America Cricket Association’s website (link) has much more information on the game along with a video on cricket which is included below: