American College Cricket » Princeton University http://americancollegecricket.com The Original American Game Thu, 16 May 2013 14:17:02 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 124 years later,challenge accepted ! Harvard vs Yale ! http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/10/18/124-years-laterchallenge-accepted-harvard-vs-yale/ http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/10/18/124-years-laterchallenge-accepted-harvard-vs-yale/#comments Fri, 19 Oct 2012 03:33:50 +0000 ljodah http://americancollegecricket.com/?p=10393

 From the Harvard Crimson in 1887:  Recently the following challenge was sent to the Yale News by the Harvard Cricket Association:- 

“Gentlemen: We wish, in the name of the Harvard University Cricket Association, to challenge, through your paper, Yale University to play a match game of cricket next spring, the date and place to be arranged here-after. The challenge will remain open until Feb. 1, 1888. Hoping that we shall soon have a favorable answer, we are yours very truly,

JAMES B. MARKOE, President.

T. WILLING BALCH, Treasurer.

REYNOLDS D. BROWN, Secretary.”
 
The Harvard Crimson went on to say, “There is no regular cricket eleven at Yale, but there must be many men who have played the game either at St. Paul’s School or elsewhere before going to college.”
 
In connection with the above challenge, the New York Times said editorially:-

“The challenge of Harvard to Yale to meet her in a match at cricket would have more chance of acceptance were not this sport one of the few in which the New Haven institution as yet makes no pretensions to expertness.
 
The great cricketing college is the University of Pennsylvania, which is very easily first in it. The laurels of base-ball, foot-ball, boating, tennis, or field and track athletics may pass from one institution to another during successive years, but no American college meets Pennsylvania on the wicket with much prospect of coming off victor. 
Haverford, Columbia and Harvard, however, often put fine elevens in the field, and it would probably give a great impulse to one of the most beneficial and least objectionable of college pastimes if Yale should now accept the Harvard challenge, pick out a team of cricketers, and with the opening of spring begin field practice in earnest.“
 
Though there were other challenges our Research Dept (aka Google) has found no record of Yale fielding a cricket team,against Harvard or other universities, nor did cricket historian David Sentance.
 
At the end of 2008 when Lloyd Jodah was beginning American College Cricket, Yale was one of the first colleges he was in contact with, a student named Varun Parundare, in attempting to start cricket clubs for the first American College Cricket Spring Break Championship.
 
It was Parundare who gave Jodah the link showing the Spring Break dates for US colleges.  The promotional posters (scrapped) for the first American College Cricket Spring Break Championship listed Yale as one of the teams.
 
Ultimately Yale did not field a team, and University of Pennsylvania once again led the way to become the first Ivy League school to join American College Cricket, in 2010. However within the last month, Harvard, Cornell and Princeton have joined the national organisation, and played in the American College Cricket North East regional. Harvard defeated Princeton in their first meeting, on Oct 6.
 
This semester the Yale club managed to pull together a team to take on their historic rivals Harvard, in a “friendly” cricket match as reported excellently here in the Yale Daily News:
 
So 150 years after an official cricket club was first started at Harvard (1862), and 124 years after the challenge was issued, Harvard and Yale finally met in a cricket match ! 

 

 

 

Penn Cricket field in the 1800′s

]]> http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/10/18/124-years-laterchallenge-accepted-harvard-vs-yale/feed/ 0 Final four for North East Championship ! http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/10/08/final-four-for-north-east-championship/ http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/10/08/final-four-for-north-east-championship/#comments Mon, 08 Oct 2012 04:20:27 +0000 ljodah http://americancollegecricket.com/?p=10269

Harvard Cricket Club, originally founded 1862,restarted 2011, now in American College Cricket North East Championship final 4

 

Five new college teams put on their American College Cricket uniforms to establish a foundation for cricket in their schools. Passion and love for the game brought them from as far as Massachusetts and upstate NY, as well as nearby NJ.
 
A total of 10 teams battled on 4 fields in Queens and Brooklyn for the Deryck Jodah Trophy in the American College Cricket North East Championship. The weather was gorgeous despite the forecast of rain and the players made the most of it.
 
Because of hitches with the CricHQ scoring app we are not able to bring you scorecards now,and other stats, however the app is a great option for scoring (as we found in the March National Championship) & we’ll continue using it in future tournaments.
 
Harvard won vs Princeton University
York College won vs Cornell University
Boston University won vs LIU-Brooklyn
New Jersey Institute of Technology won vs Cornell
Rutgers won vs NYU-Polytechnic
Boston University won vs Northeastern
Harvard won vs LIU-Brooklyn
NYU-Polytechnic won vs NJ Institute of Technology
Rutgers won vs Northeastern
York College vs Princeton
NJIT and NYU-Polytechnic finished with a 1-1 record.
 
National Champions York College, Boston University,Harvard and Rutgers were undefeated and qualifed for the final four to be filmed by TV Asia. The date for the Semis & Finals will be confirmed, but is set for the weekend of Oct 27 & 28.
 
Harvard Cricket Club’s performance is particularly noteworthy as its one of the colleges that cricket was played at in the late 1700s and early 1800s. It established an official club in 1862 and played until the 1920s. Motivated by American College Cricket Ibrahim Khan restarted the club in 2011, and now its set to play on TV challenging for the Deryck Jodah Trophy !
 
Boston University is one of the 5 colleges that took part in the first American College Cricket Spring Break Championship (the Nationals) in 2009 whilst Rutgers won the first North East regional in 2010.
 
2012 National Champions York College also reached the 2010 Nationals Finals,after being started just a month before by Suleman Mohammed and Lloyd Jodah. 

Photos:

1 – Harvard Cricket team

2 – LIU – Brooklyn Blackbirds with Lloyd Jodah, American College Cricket President

3 – Princeton cricket team, with Lloyd Jodah

4 – Northeastern Huskies

4 - openers for Princeton                                                                                                    5 – Ibrahim Khan – Captain of Harvard Cricket Club

 

]]> http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/10/08/final-four-for-north-east-championship/feed/ 0 Princeton University joins American College Cricket ! http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/06/23/princeton-university-joins-american-college-cricket/ http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/06/23/princeton-university-joins-american-college-cricket/#comments Sat, 23 Jun 2012 04:14:56 +0000 ljodah http://americancollegecricket.com/?p=9560

 Though informal cricket might have been played at Princeton in the 1700s & early 1800s a cricket club was formed in 1857, after UPenn’s in 1842 and before Harvard’s in 1862.
 
It was played in the 1860s and 1870s, though the Nassau Lit’s predicted that “the college authorities would stop it, as there was something wicket in it”, and sporadically since. 
 
Princeton was challenged to a cricket match by Harvard University in 1889  Harvard coincidentally has just restarted a Cricket Club and become a part of American College Cricket.
 
From 2009 American College Cricket, and the significant media profile it has generated for the game, including on Facebook, is inspiring young cricketers all over the USA & Canada. The opportunity to compete against their peers is spurring students, who might have left the game, to be re-engaged.
 
The Princeton Cricket Club was restarted in 2010 by Tushar Gupta, who upon graduation was succeeded by Ric Sengupta, who got his MA in Mathematics this semester. Vijit Kapoor will be the President this Fall.
 
Ric Sengupta epitomizes our college cricket student-leaders : he’s going to pursue his Ph.D on a MIT Presidential Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) but as an undergrad won creative writing awards ! Including :- the Morris W. Kroll Poetry Prize and the Martin A. Dale ’53 Summer Award, 2010, from Princeton University, to fund research in the British National Archives and the British Library in London, for a novella on Sherlock Holmes’s investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders.
 
Club member Faeez Ul Haq, was just named a recipient of the 2012 Spirit of Princeton Award.
 
New Club President Vijit Kapoor, an economics junior, writes for “for the sports section of the school newspaper and have recently been involved in the social entrepreneurship club on campus“.
 
Like many of American College Cricket teams at the beginning, the Princeton club plays tape-ball, and will transition to hard ball,said Kapoor:
 
“We play indoor tape ball cricket two nights a week, but we’re trying to get a major order of equipment through the Athletics department, including a half-length jute mat, so we can potentially host matches and play a bit of hard ball cricket ourselves. We’ve only played one match in the two years, which we lost.  We’re looking to play matches against other colleges as much as possible. We’re really excited about what American College Cricket is doing !” 
 
Princeton’s colors are orange and black. The school’s athletes are known as Tigers, and the mascot is a tiger. The school has a huge rivalry with Rutgers, begun in 1869, when Rutgers defeated Princeton in the first college football game. The Princeton-Rutgers Cannon War is an on-going saga between students of the 2 schools.

Nassau Hall, built 1754

 
Nassau Hall had cannon fired on it by George Washington troops during the Revolutionary War (when it was occupied by the Britsh). Princeton was the USA’s capital for 4 months in 1883 when the Continental Congress met at Nassau Hall whilst drafting the US Consitution.

 
Three Presidents graduated from Princeton including ”Father of the US Constitution” James Madison, and John F Kennedy attended in 1935.
 
Among countless other famous alumni are astronaut John Conrad (one of a few men who walked on the moon), First Lady Michelle Obama, Senator Bill Bradley (Hall of Fame basketball player), actor Jimmy Stewart (of its Wonderful Life), F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, & Robert L Johnson, Founder of BET.
  
TV’s Wayne Rogers (Mash), David Duchovy (X Files), Dean Cain (Superman: the Adventures of Lois & Clark) and Ellie Kemper (The Office) are Princeton alumni.
 
Bruce Wayne attended Princeton (according to “Batman Begins”) and Fred Flintstone was a star quarterback at ”Princestone” when he attended briefly. 
 
The Princeton Cricket Club is looking forward to taking on its Ivy League counterparts, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University, as well as other American College Cricket schools.     – by Lloyd Jodah
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