Last weekend, the College’s club cricket team competed in their first ever match, where they narrowly lost, 98-97, to undefeated Union College.
Union started strong with powerful bowling and sharp intensity, and the Ephs were able to respond as the game progressed. Unfortunately, the Ephs ended the match one run short.
Despite the tough loss, this weekend marked the team’s first ever competitive match after years of hard work.
Current members of the team aren’t entirely sure when cricket was first played at the College, but today’s team first came together in September 2022. Akif Ismail ’26 recalled hearing rumors during his first year at the College about a dedicated group of alums that used to scrimmage as students. “Some people used to play back in the day —- very casually, once or twice a semester,” he said.
But by the time Ismail came to the College, that group was long gone, and the cricket scene had frozen over. That was, until he had a fortuitous run-in with an alum. “One day, I was taking the bus to North Adams, and I randomly bumped into this alum from Pakistan, Sobhan Mehmood ’20 and he told me, ‘There’s a bat and a ball on the fourth floor of Bascom House,’” Ismail said.
Later that day, Ismail returned to the College with Mehmood, and the two hunted down the cricket equipment.
Even equipped with the tools of the trade, Ismail still had much work to do before a cricket match could take place — he needed to find people willing to play.
“I would wake up on Saturday morning, [go around] Mission and Frosh Quad knocking on … doors and calling everyone imaginable,” he said.
Willing participants were difficult to find because of the sport’s obscurity in the United States, according to Ismail. “Not many people know about [cricket],” he said. “If I go around town, people are like, ‘Oh, which insect are you talking about?’”
Ismail, who is from Pakistan, noted that, in the team’s early stages, he relied on recruiting other students from South Asia.
Even though the community was small, it quickly became about much more than the game. “My freshman year, Cricket Club was a space for South Asians to meet up [and] talk about life,” Ismail said.
As the clun continued to grow, Jacob Rivet ’25 was planning to study abroad. Luckily, he spotted a Daily Message promoting the club’s Saturday practice. “I was going to study abroad in India, so I was like, ‘Dude, I gotta learn cricket,’” he said in an interview with the Record. And he decided he had to go.
Not wanting to go alone, Rivet passed the news on to Bobby Verhey ’25, another future member of the team. “[Jacob] sends me this daily message that says, ‘there’s cricket tomorrow on the field hockey fields,’” Verhey said. “And he texts me, ‘wanna go?’ And I text him back: ‘I have no clue … [what] cricket [is], but sounds fun.’”
Neither had played cricket before. Regardless, Rivet and Verhey felt instantly welcomed.
“We were the [only] two new guys — everyone [else] knew how to play cricket,” Verhey said. “And they were so welcoming and so awesome.”
In the semesters after Rivet and Verhey joined, the club continued to grow. As the club began to pick up speed, however, Ismail had to leave the team when he studied away in fall of 2024. “I had to give the club to somebody,” he said. “I was so lucky to find somebody way more passionate than I am.” That somebody was Basim Mutaal ’27, who took over in the fall of 2024 and is now the team’s captain.
Mutaal quickly stepped up to lead the team. “Now we have this schedule going on, and everybody’s aware that on Saturday we should show up for cricket,” Ismail said. Eventually they did not have to use a folding chair in place of actual wickets, Rivet noted.
When Verhey returned to campus this fall after spending the spring of 2024 off campus, he saw the club’s growth firsthand. “I came back, and [I was] hoping that the Cricket Club was still going, and it turned out [to be] stronger than ever,” he said.
Ismail noticed a similar improvement once he returned from his semester away. “People got better and better and we were going faster and faster… we realized we [were] ready for a match,” he said.
But even though the team was in match form, the group still had to overcome significant hurdles before they could set up a real contest. “Organizing a cricket game where cricket games don’t exist is very hard,” Ismail said. “You don’t even know who to contact at some schools.”
Luckily, Mutaal had an ace up his sleeve. “I know quite a few of [Union College’s] players,” he said. “I’ve played with them in Pakistan, at the club level. So I messaged them about potentially organizing a game, and they were down.”
Dates were set, calendars cleared, and anticipation built.
There was one small problem, though. Because the team had never played a regulation game before, it didn’t have a set roster. To rectify this problem, the club needed to find some new recruits.
“We reached out to two golfers, Peter Dohr [’25] and Owen Nielsen [’27], thinking that the golf swing would translate well to the cricket swing,” Verhey said. The team also recruited Peter Deegan-Krause ’28 and Nick Mancuso ’26, who play on club soccer. Each of these newcomers made appearances in the game on Saturday.
After a fiery pep talk by Muhammad Haad ’26, it was time to take the pitch. The team’s diversity took Union by surprise when they entered the pitch.
Mutaal explained that the entire Union team was composed of students from South Asia, where cricket is most popular. “And then we walk in with recruited golf athletes, baseball athletes, skiers and stuff,” he said.
For Mutaal and Ismail, the team’s diversity has become essential to its nature. “It’s our team identity,” Mutaal said.
“[The] most diverse cricket team in the United States,” Rivet added.
The new recruits learned fast and played well, according to Ismail. “[Nielsen] was amazing,” he said. “He learned so fast. He was our wicket keeper, and I thought he was doing everything perfectly to a tee. And he had never done it before.”
Another standout performer for the Ephs was Adi Malhotra ’25, who had 48 runs on 33 balls. At one point in the match, Malhotra hit four sixes in a row. Sixes — named for their point value — are rare, and only occur when a player hits the ball out of the park without touching the ground, the home run of cricket.
“In that moment, I think we all thought we were gonna win a match, and they were stressing,” said Verhey.
The Ephs fought hard until the end, but were ultimately just one run behind Union as the game came to a close.
While the loss was disappointing, the team said that coming so close to winning was quite the feat. “[Union has] been unbeaten for, I think, three semesters at this point,” Multal explained. “A one-run loss to such an experienced team isn’t the worst result for a brand-new team.”
Regardless of the score, the match was crucial for the Williams cricket program. “The biggest consequence of us having a cricket game is that a lot more people on campus are aware of [the club’s] existence,” Ismail said.
In fact, it appears as though many people are catching onto the fact that the term “cricket” is not just reserved for entomologists. “There was a party in Tyler last night and people were coming up to me, asking us about the cricket match,” Verhey said. “It was cool to see [that] it’s kind of gained some relevance on campus.”
