UNC Cricket Team
By Deepti Panjabi
This fall, every Monday and Wednesday you can catch them on the Ehringhaus fields. You will see them working hard, but more importantly working as a team as they bowl, bat, and field. A sport that has and is played in over fifteen countries, and since 2005 on Carolina’
s campus: Cricket.
The UNC-CH Cricket Club is a team that has existed on and off for almost 10 to 20 years. However, it was officially named a student organization in the fall of 2005.
Two students walking back from studying for a test: Vishal Dhandha and Tejan Diwanji had a conversation about starting a cricket team and this how this small idea progressed into a team of dedicated cricket players.
Currently, the team has about 18 members (including inactive and active members) who include undergraduates mainly, but a few graduates and alumni. They play teams in the area: at Duke, N.C. State and other universities and colleges near by. In fact, they have upcoming games against Davidson, Campbell, N.C. State, and Duke. The current president of the team is Siddharth Patel, a sophomore at Carolina. He began his position this fall after Vishal Dhandha stepped down. Dhandha (a Senior at UNC) stepped down from the position because he was concerned that after he graduated that the cricket team would fall apart, unless an underclassmen took up the position to keep the tradition going.
As well as Dhandha, Patel decided to step up because he also wanted the cricket team to live on at Carolina. Patel discussed his goals for his team being: winning games, playing in more tournaments, and improving the team as a whole. When asked whether he felt there was support from fans and students on campus Patel said: “We are trying to schedule more games at home so that we see more coming out to watch.”
Whether you watch them at their practices twice a week, or in their next tournament, you will see that the UNC-CH Cricket Club is a team full of passion for the sport. For more information on the team go to: http://studentorgs.unc.edu/unccricket/.
- Deepti Panjabi
Diaspora is UNC Sangam's South Asian Magazine Publication
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