College sports pioneer UPenn Cricket names its team for nationals!
UPenn Cricket has named its team for the national Championship. Undergrad and Captain Saksham Karwal said, “It would be a fitting tribute to the Penn’s history to bring back the Chanderpaul Trophy”. The Club Vice President Roshan Rai added, “The entire Penn team is grateful to Mike Reno and the Sports Council for its continued support and generosity.”
Both last year and this year the financial support given to the club by the University has been among the best.
TEAM: Saksham Karwal (Captain),Roshan Rai,Mayurnath Sankar Rao,Gavish Sharma,Varun Madan,Anubhav Sharma,Bhavik Shah,Rushabh Shah,Subash Poudel,Jay Dave,Rahul Bourothu,Dhruv Tosniwal.
The following history of cricket at Penn is excerpted from the University of Pennsylvania website – University Archives and Records Center:
Cricket, organized as Penn’s first sport in 1842, began splendidly but then faded away after the graduation of William Rotch Wister in 1846. It began as the Junior Crciket Club and a coach was hired to teach cricket strategies and techniques to the students.
In the 1860s it experienced a revival,and then, with only a few short breaks, would continue as an organized sport at UPenn until 1924. During much of the nineteenth century, cricket was just as popular, if not more popular than the emerging campus sports of baseball, crew, football and track and field.
There is evidence that a Varsity XI played every season in the 70’s after 1875; opponents included Haverford College, Columbia University, Penn alumni, and the St. George XI of New York City.In 1881 Penn joined with Harvard, Haverford, Princeton and Columbia to form the Intercollegiate Cricket Association. Later Cornell would also be admitted.
In 1895 Penn began competing on the international level. In July a cricket match was played on the Manheim grounds in Germantown,PA with one team made up of players from colleges in the United States and the other team consisting of young men from Canadian colleges; six Penn students were on the American team. Then, in September, past and current members of Penn’s varsity cricket team played past and current members of the English cricket teams of Oxford and Cambridge; Penn defeated the Oxford-Cambridge team by a margin of one hundred runs.
Cricket continued to thrive at the University of Pennsylvania after the turn of the century. In the summer of 1906, the Penn cricket team toured Canada to play matches with clubs there. The following summer, of 1907, the team made its most important tour, traveling to England and Ireland to compete with schools and colleges there. The serious decline of cricket at Penn did not began until the World War I era. After a brief revival in the early 1920s, Penn fielded its last cricket team in 1924 until recently.
In 2009 Penn cricket joined American College Cricket, and particpated in the 2010 American College Cricket Spring Break Championship.
The impact of University of Pennsylvania’s cricket teams was felt beyond the collegiate world. Many members of Penn’s cricket teams went on to play for and even to found clubs and teams in Philadelphia .
http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/sports/cricket/histy.html
UPenn at the 2010 American College Cricket Spring Championship in March 2010
members of UPenn’s 1842 cricket team (from Penn’s archives)
09 Mar 2011, 10:29 am
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