Club President Anup Gandhi said, “American College Cricket has achieved a lot in just 18 months!! We’d like to be eligible for the National Championship next year. But first we’ll try to put together a good team for the Big 10 Regional this September.”
Hawkeyes Cricket Club of Iowa University.
Anup and the Hawkeyes Cricket Club have themselves achieved a lot in less than a year. Starting from scratch Gandhi said “we organized intra mural tapeball games to attract cricket fans, thnn tournaments. As the group became larger we were able to demonstrate to the Rec Sports Dept that there was interest in cricket and they recognized us officially. The next step was getting a pitch and field. The school laid down a concrete pitch, covered with matting for us, between the 2 rugby fields, and we now have our own pitch on campus!”
Of course the fact that rugby has 2 fields well before cricket even got 1 is an indication of how far behind cricket, the original American game, is behind every other sport. The Hawkeyes cricket club effort is an example to all of what can be accomplished for cricket in colleges.
The University of Iowa was founded February 25, 1847, 59 days after Iowa became a state. It is on a 1,900-acre campus with the Iowa River running through it! Iowa has an enrollment of over 30,000. 58 percent come from Iowa, 8 % are International students from 104 countries.
A top US University in many categories including medicine, law, business and fine arts, according to the school’s website & Wikipedia the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is recognized nationally as one of the USA’s best hospitals. The University established the first law school west of the Mississippi and was the world’s first university to accept creative work in theatre, writing, music and art on an equal basis with academic research.
It is one of the top 10 “international universities” in the U.S. according to the Asian Correspondent (April 1, 2010) & ranked 66th US University in 2009 by US News & World Report.
In 2010 Playboy magazine ranked University of Iowa as the 10th best party school in the United States. According to the UI Alumni website “In heaven there is no beer (that’s why we drink it here)” and the Beatles “Eleanor Rigby” are popular UI songs.
In wrestling the Hawkeyes have won 23 national titles and 34 Big 10 titles but in Football they got their first major bowl victory in over 50 years when they defeated Georgia Tech in the FedEx Bowl in January 2010.
Dallas Clark tight end and Bob Sanders safety, for the Indianapolis Colts, and Nate Kaeding, kicker for the San Diego Chargers are alumni as is Ashton Kutcher and George Gallup, founder of Gallup Public Opinion Poll (what do you think of that ?).
The Cricket Club VP is Ankush Bhasin, Vaibhav Yadav is the Secretary and Pradeep Kapadia the Treasurer and Samintra Bhattacharya, the webmaster. Dr Kalpaj Parekh is the Club Advisor.
The Hawkeyes’ traditional rivalry is with the University of Minnesota Gophers. Another rival is the University of Wisconsin Badgers. The Hawkeyes will face the Gophers in the Big 10 Regional cricket championship – who will win?
Lloyd Jodah is President of American College Cricket.