Wickets and Runs: NYU-Poly Cricket Club Heads to Championship
Instead of sand in their shoes, 12 Polytechnic Institute of NYU students hope to return from spring break with grass stains on their batting pads and batting gloves.
The students are members of NYU-Poly’s cricket club who will represent the school at the American College Cricket Championship March 17-21 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. And if you don’t know what batting pads and batting gloves are, they’re essential cricket equipment: batting pads protect players’ shins; batting gloves protect their fingers.
The teammates, each with more than five years of cricket experience, will leave chilly Brooklyn on Tuesday, March 16 for the 47-game tournament. They’ll face Boston University on Thursday, the University of Pennsylvania and York College clubs on Friday, Rutgers University on Saturday, and if all goes as planned, they’ll vie for the Chanderpaul Trophy in the semi finals and the final game to be streamed online.
Nineteen US college cricket clubs, plus the University of the West Indies and the USA Under-19 World Cup team will compete in the championship.
NYU-Poly’s cricket club was established informally two years ago, and became an official club this year. Bruce Niswander, director of NYU-Poly’s business incubators and director of the Office of Innovation, Technology Transfer, and Entrepreneurship, coaches the team, which includes Imad Akhtar, Dhaval Dharaiya, Adrian Gordon, Sumanth Kalidindi, Karan Khetan, Dinesh Kumar, Ali Ahmed Lali, Raj Parekh, Alok Prabhu, Dhwanil Shah, Hardik Shah, and Jagminder Singh.
