Back in the swing
Ibrahim Khan ’14 charged down the track like a long jumper approaching take-off, gave a hop, and swung his arm in an overhand arc to release a small white ball. Then, taking up a flat-sided wooden bat, he fended off the ball thrown toward him on a bounce with the deftness of a hockey goalie. The captain of the Harvard Cricket Club was demonstrating bowling and batting techniques in a corner of the Gordon Indoor Track on a recent Monday. Weather had forced the tutorial inside, from Jordan Field, the cricketers’ home turf. “We usually play in white — but clothes, not snow,” the club’s faculty adviser, Professor Stephen Blyth, said with a smile. The quintessential game of the British Commonwealth is experiencing a renaissance at Harvard, where it was first played in 1868. The Harvard Cricket Club, composed largely of international or U.S.-born students of Indian, Pakistani, or West Indian descent, was...