The club cricket team will be hosting the annual Six-a-Side Cricket Tournament, which the team is calling “The Wolfpack Championship,” on Lee Field this Saturday and Sunday.
The event, which runs each day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., will consist of nine teams primarily from the Mid-Atlantic Cricket Conference.
After participating in a similar tournament sponsored by Duke’s club cricket team in the fall, the Wolfpack’s club cricket team will be utilizing the fundraising event to promote club growth and give to charity.
“We donate money from this fundraiser to the Association of India’s Development of Duke University,” club president Naresh Devineni said.
Devineni, a doctoral student in civil engineering, sees the opportunity as an outreach to the community. He hopes the event will be able to foster the growth of a diverse population by uniting everyone with a common interest.
In addition to its fall tournament, the team also utilizes this event to generate awareness of the sport and to possibly recruit future players.
“These tournaments help us recruit a lot of new players as we are starting the season,” captain Sammi Syed, a graduate student in civil engineering, said. “Including the sponsors, the families of players and the teams, we are expecting around 150 people for the event.”
Recruits have proven to be very important for the team. This season, the club had to build a new team — a team that has continued to follow a specific trend.
“We’ve done very well recently,” Devineni said. “We beat UNC for the fourth straight time.”
The team’s victory against the Tar Heels, coming just one day after the men’s basketball team’s home loss to the team, highlights a string of victories for the cricket club, including a win against Campbell and a local tournament triumph.
One of the team’s biggest past highlights, however, came against an undefeated Richmond club. “Richmond was supposed to be the strongest team in the area,” Devineni said, “But we came in and beat them. They lost to us at their home ground.”
This weekend’s tournament, viewed more as a fun gathering rather than a competitive event, utilizes the shortened version of the game. When played, the long version of cricket can take days or longer to complete.
This allows teams to play about 20 matches at the two-day event, which comes as a nice alternative to the upcoming, more competitive cricket matches.
“Our next meet we have is the MACC championships,” Syed said. “Since almost every team competing this weekend is from our conference, this will be a nice warm-up for everyone.”
