American College Cricket Presents MVP Award to NYU-Poly’s Adrian Gordon
School’s Cricket Club Cited for Advancing the Sport in Brooklyn and America; 17-Year-Old Freshman Wins Emerging Player Honors
American College Cricket (ACC) President Lloyd Jodah yesterday presented Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) star cricket player Adrian Gordon with the uniform of one of the world’s most prestigious professional teams - the team with which he will practice as a winner of ACC’s Most Valuable Player award.
In a ceremony on the school’s Brooklyn campus, Jodah, NYU-Poly President Jerry M. Hultin and ACC CEO Nino DiLoreto honored Gordon and the NYU-Poly Cricket Club for bringing the second most popular sport in the world to one of the most diversified colleges in America. U.S. News and World Report ranks NYU-Poly as fifth in the nation in diversity.
Seventeen-year-old Azrab Cheema, a freshman majoring in business and technology management, was also recognized as the ACC’s Emerging Player. Cheema graduated from Rachel Carson High School for Coastal Studies in Brooklyn.
“At NYU-Poly, we challenge our students from across the world to lead new paths, and this is what you did here,” Hultin said to the Cricket Club members. “You expanded opportunities for your fellow students, you collaborated in the same way that you do in your academics - to improve lives - and I applaud you for that.”
Gordon earned his ACC Spring Break Championship award, sponsored by Big League USA, in large part for scoring a phenomenal 145 runs in a single match and two half centuries in other matches in the national tournament last month in Florida. He and another MVP, Adil Bhatti of Montgomery College, will travel this month to India to be guests of the Indian Premier League’s prestigious Rajasthan Royals.
Gordon, a pre-med (biomolecular science) senior who will graduate this spring, lives in Rosedale, Long Island. He started playing cricket as a toddler in Antigua, and he first played competitively at age 9. He represented Antigua at the Under 13, 15 and Under 19 levels. He began his undergraduate studies in Florida and caught the eye of Jodah when he was playing on a Queens field. Jodah encouraged him to form a cricket club at NYU-Poly, and in 2009 Gordon helped found the club, recruited fellow students - most of them graduate engineering students born in India - and acted as de facto coach. The NYU-Poly cricketers made it to the ACC final four in their first year of play.
A strong, fast bowler, Gordon was selected last year to represent the United States in Bermuda at the 2010 ICC Americas Regional Division 1 Championships. At this year’s ACC tournament, he demonstrated remarkable batting skills - a highly prized combination in the sport.
“My catalyst for making the 145 was really the team,” Gordon told the audience during the ceremony. “Those talks we had: They really got me pumped up. My performance was because of the team.”
In addition to the opportunity arranged by the ACC to be a guest of the Rajasthan Royals, Gordon has also been invited to England next month to practice with the prestigious Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club.
Bruce Niswander, the Cricket Club’s faculty advisor and director of NYU-Poly’s business incubators and technology transfer, told the students: “You serve as invaluable missionaries to the United States and the rest of the world in the way you have worked together. Do not forget that as you graduate; continue what you have learned.”
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About Polytechnic Institute of New York University
Polytechnic Institute of New York University (formerly Polytechnic University), an affiliate of New York University, is a comprehensive school of engineering, applied sciences, technology and research, and is rooted in a 157-year tradition of invention, innovation and entrepreneurship: i2e. The institution, founded in 1854, is the nation’s second-oldest private engineering school. In addition to its main campus in New York City at MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn, it also offers programs at sites throughout the region and around the globe. Globally, NYU-Poly has programs in Israel, China and is an integral part of NYU's campus in Abu Dhabi.
