By Daniel Kerwin

Macalester and Carleton may already have enough reasons to legitimately be called rivals, but on Saturday another huge factor was added with the first ever playing of the Macalester Carleton Cricket Tournament.Although Macalester has a group of enthusiastic cricketers on campus, there hasn’t been much of an opportunity for a team from Macalester to play an intercollegiate match. That was until a couple of months ago, when Carleton, which has a legitimate cricket club on campus, invited Macalester to send a team down for a one-on-one tournament. The tournament was held last Saturday at Carleton, and despite coming in as underdogs, Macalester won the best-of-three tournament by sweeping all three of the matches.

“In the morning the slogan was to go out and play for our pride, and I think everyone did that and it worked out great, it helped us be on our toes,” Macalester’s team captain Madhav Verma said. “We had a lot against us, but we beat everything out and played good cricket. It was a very successful day for all of us in our Mac lives.”

The three matches were played with a limit of 12 overs per side (an over is a set of six bowls, equivalent to pitches in baseball). In the first match, Macalester successfully chased a target of 47 runs in just over 10 overs, and in the second match Macalester was again set a target to chase, successfully beating Carleton’s 52 runs. Macalester batted first in the third match, setting a formidable 94 run target for Carleton to chase, which Carleton ended up falling short of by 20 runs.

Unfortunately, since this was the first year for the tournament there was no trophy involved, but Verma hopes that in the coming years these sorts of details will be worked out.

The victory is all the more impressive considering that the Macalester squad didn’t have access to proper equipment prior to the matches. The matches at Carleton were played outside on a short-grass field with full stumps, but at Macalester the players often play on the sidewalk in front on Olin Rice, using a notice board as the stumps.

The players hope to form an officially recognized cricket club at Macalester for the coming fall, a move that would make it possible to have to proper equipment here at Macalester. Although there has been talk of starting a cricket club in the past, the win against Carleton offers an ideal opportunity to seize a wave of momentum.

For people like Verma, who is a senior, it is something that has been missing at Macalester, and he is disappointed that he may not be able to be a part of the future of cricket at Macalester, wherever it may lead.

The roster is Madhav Verma (captain), Saad Anjum, Senthuran Raveendranathan, Dharshana Tennekoon, Sher Afghan Tareen, Jamyang Tashi, Adrian Campbell, Munadir Ahmed, Ajwad Imran, Simon Paulin and Derrick Fernando (alum ’06).