Take me out to . . . cricket?

BY MICHELLE QUINN

Influx of computer engineers from India leads to surge in game's popularity in valley

Kiron Haltore slips out of Tandem Computer at 5 p.m. and drives to Wilson Field in Santa Clara. It's a typical American park scene -- kids playing soccer and baseball, teenagers throwing frisbees and a few people tending a community garden.

That is, until Haltore joins 40 other Indian software and hardware engineers for cricket practice.

Cricket is everything America is not. Athletes dress formally in white. A game can lumber on for five days. Players drink tea during breaks and eat potato curry for lunch. Patience, composure and skill, not aggression and strength, are the game's most beneficial attributes.

And yet, on fields across Silicon Valley, an influx of Indian engineers has spawned a certifiable cricket explosion.

The Santa Clara Cricket Club, one of 25 clubs in the Northern California Cricket Association, is the unlikely beneficiary of the current job boom. The team could be its own high-tech company, with an array of engineering talent from companies such as Sun Microsystems, Tandem, Oracle, Avant! and C-Cube.

Club members share job leads during batting practice. They share tips for handling immigration hurdles. And in their matches, the newcomers have transformed the club from an informal social team with lackluster performance to a cricketing powerhouse straight from the fields of India, where some team members played on their state teams. Last year, Santa Clara was a league finalist.

The club has attracted so many good players that dozens of others wait all season for one of the 22 coveted spots on the club's two teams. Frustrated players join other teams or start their own. In the past year, the influx of engineers from India has spurred the creation of four new clubs in the South Bay, and the cricket association is establishing a third league to accommodate more people who want to play.

``I used to do a sales job,'' said Prasad Saggurti, the team's recruiter, who no longer lobbies friends, leaflets Indian grocery stores or posts want-ads on Internet news groups to find players. ``Now I try to keep people's expectations in check. Maybe they'll get a chance when people go on vacation, I tell them.''

The enthusiasm is hard to contain.

Ravi Shankar, a 28-year-old engineer (not related to the sitar musician with the same name), stumbled upon the Santa Clara cricket game when he was killing time before a job interview.

When he accepted a job at Sun Microsystems, Shankar had two questions for Babu Gopaladhine, a Sun engineer and club member: Could he play cricket with the Santa Clara Cricket Club, and could he find a place to live in the tight housing market? He asked them in that order.

Such passion was hard to find 10 years ago when Stan Kent, an English pub owner, started the club. Some people had never heard of cricket, and some confused it with croquet, a mistake that enrages cricketers. Cricket has never caught on in the United States, except in pockets of ex-patriots from England and former Commonwealth countries such as Australia, the West Indies, South Africa, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Before finding a home ground, Kent and other members spent hours preparing fields before games. Cricket needs a lawn of short grass and a 32-yard ``pitch'' traditionally created out of shaved grass. By the time a game began, Kent was exhausted from mowing lawns and nailing down an AstroTurf mat. Once, he asked an Indian player to help with the mowing, only to be told, ``Cutting grass is not in my destiny.''

Humble beginnings

The early years were thin, as the club struggled to find players. ``It was tragic,'' said Kent, now living in Los Angeles. Scores were in the 50s and 60s in a sport in which scores typically are over 200 runs in a one-day game.

But two years ago, when the valley's economy started to heat up, the team was inundated. India sends students and trained information technology graduates to the United States. Most come on visas allowing them to work for up to six years before applying for permanent resident status. There are roughly 70,000 natives of India in the Bay Area.

``The Silicon Valley teams have gotten much better and have become very selective,'' said Mike Miller, vice chairman of the United States Cricket Federation and chairman of the Marin Cricket Club, which was established in 1927. ``It is a phenomenon at the moment. There are a lot of rich Indians down there running their own companies.''

When Haltore, now captain of the A team, arrived in 1987, he never expected to play cricket. It was the price he thought he had to pay as an immigrant leaving home for a foreign country. Now, he's devoted his Wednesdays and Saturdays to practice cricket; on Sunday, he plays.

``It's in my blood,'' he said.

The only time Santa Clara players have played Americans is when they played the Los Angeles Krickets, which is more of a social experiment than a serious cricket team. The Krickets are made up of people who live in Los Angeles' domed village for ex-convicts, homeless and poor teenagers from Compton. In the spring, a group of Santa Clara players and some people from the Duke Of Edinburgh pub in Cupertino beat the L.A. Krickets by 70 runs. But the point wasn't to win.

``Cricket teaches that you can get something if you are really patient,'' Kent said.

In fact, cricket players pride themselves on their ultra-civilized behavior.

At Caroline Davis Intermediate School in San Jose, the cricket team sometimes intercedes with teenagers who throw trash or spray graffiti on the school grounds.

``They respect us because we're all in uniform,'' said Hasu Patel, a member of the Spartan Cricket Club.

It's the same on the field. The expression ``it's not cricket'' is synonymous with ``it's not fair.'' Abusing umpires is unheard of. When players do step out of line, justice can be harsh and swift.

Fisticuffs, stiff penalty

The Santa Clara club is still divided over fisticuffs from last year's Memorial Day weekend.

The captain of the visiting Sunnyvale team was unhappy that the game's umpire was late driving in from Richmond. A replacement was found. But when the Richmond umpire arrived, he wanted to get in the game. Words were exchanged. The umpire threw a punch, and the Sunnyvale captain returned the blow. Both were suspended for the rest of the season within the week.

Was the sentence too harsh? One coach asked: Don't we have a right to self-defense in America?

``We want to send a message that this is a gentleman's game,'' said Srinivas Krishnamurti, the Santa Clara club's president.

© San Jose Mercury News