Today, the Sports and Globalization group traveled to the nearby Marylebone Cricket Club-Lord’s Cricket Ground to learn how to play cricket and better understand the sport’s history. This location is just a 30 minute walk from our apartments in Camden and offers some pleasant sights of London on the way. To start off our learning experience, our gracious coaches led us in some basic calisthenic drills to warm up our legs and arms. During this warm up, we performed several reaction time competitions in pairs. Next, with our partners, we played catch with a smaller version of a cricket ball in order to further warm up our throwing muscles and get to know the feel of the ball. Finally, we were able to begin bowling the ball like the professionals, incorporating a small running start as well. This eventually started a competition within each pairing to see who could hit a small cone near the middle of each person the most times in 5 minutes.

After learning the mechanics of bowling the cricket ball, we were then taught by our coaches how to hit the ball. After covering the most basic rules of cricket, our coaches broke us up into two teams and we started a match. In the match, one of the coaches pitched to all of us in order to ensure everybody had a fair chance of getting a hit. Each person on the team batted once before we switched which team was batting. During the match, several students connected on ‘sixes,’ the cricket term synonymous with a ‘home run’ in baseball. Also, there were some impressive defensive plays in the field that resulted in the batter being out. In the one of the images below, Sean lunges for an out as the second team to bat attempted to comeback from a large deficit. The game ended very close, with the first team to bat eventually winning by 5 runs.

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Upon the conclusion of the match, the group regathered itself to go on a fascinating tour of the Lord’s Cricket Grounds. On this tour, our guide sat us down on the lower level of the stands and described to us the lengthy and prestigious path to becoming a member at Marylebone, which requires several people to endorse a candidate along with a waiting period of over a decade. Next, we saw the opposing team’s changing room, which was remarkable not only for its small size, but also its very aged, historic look. Along its walls were plaques to commemorate great accomplishments achieved by players at those grounds, with many of the plaques dating back to the 1800s. Our tour then concluded at the indoor museum, which happened to be the second oldest sports museum in the entire world. This room was filled with trophies from all throughout cricket’s history, including several world cup trophies.

The trip to Marylebone Cricket Club-Lord’s Cricket Ground was an enriching experience for the group due to cricket being a rather unfamiliar sport to most. Learning about England’s long history of cricket was important for understanding more about how sports have shaped the country’s history. The engaging, energetic, and kind coaches and tour guides at Marylebone made this day all the more special and one we will not soon forget.

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