400 Valley Fans Warm Up for Start of--Yes--Cricket Season

Cricket is a sport, not just an insect, to millions of people now living in, or expatriated from, what was once the far-flung British Empire.

Cricket has some resemblance to the great American game of baseball. Sort of how a cucumber tea sandwich resembles a Big Mac.

Included in the hundreds of thousands of people playing this game around the world are about 400 in the San Fernando Valley who are warming up for the beginning of the Southern California Cricket Assn. season, which begins Saturday at Van Nuys’ Woodley Park.

Cricket is a game played with a bat and a ball on a large field. But that’s where familiarity ends. The object seems to be for the batters to score runs while the pitcher tries to knock a stick off a pole. First the pitcher pitches one way, then turns around and pitches the other way. Then people run around.

Then everyone comes off the field to observe tea time.

It’s wonderful, but weird. Spectators do not boo the umpire or harass the players. Playing positions are known as wicket keeper, slips, gully, third man, cover, silly mid off, silly mid on, square leg, etc.

The pitcher is called the bowler and he is changed often during an inning in which one of the 10 batsmen per inning may score between 300 and 400 runs. An inning may go on for days.

Wickets are three stumps placed upright, with crosspieces balanced in the groves of the stumps. A dislodged crosspiece retires the batsman and, some might say, not a moment too soon.

Got all that?

If this were not such a beautiful sport to watch, with the teams and umpires all dressed in white as if they were going to a garden party, one might think that this game was thought up by the Monty Python gang.

Cuban-born Jean Wong of Northridge is a part-French and part-Chinese cricketeer who learned the game while growing up in Jamaica. He is now president of the Southern California Cricket Assn.

A general contractor and resident of the Valley since 1967, he has played cricket here since 1962 and, at age 58, is still playing, now with the Golden Oldies team.

He says the association started in 1932 when English actor Sir Aubrey Smith decided to organize a game or two for the English in Hollywood.

“The first games were played in Griffith Park and included players like Errol Flynn, Boris Karloff and Ronald Coleman. We still have pictures of those old games,� Wong said.

The games drew great crowds and were almost as star-studded as the polo games played at Will Rogers’ polo field.

“Sir Aubrey was well-connected in the movie business, so all the aspiring actors from England and Australia were anxious to play on his teams,� Wong said.

From that showy beginning grew what is now the Southern California Cricket Assn., which has 37 clubs with 1,250 players playing from early April until November in locations from San Diego to Santa Barbara.

According to Wong, Southern California players come from England, Scotland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong and other places that once fell under the influence of England.

Age is no handicap, it seems, as many players are still going strong in their 50s. One is 53-year-old Van Nuys resident David Heaney, who arrived in the Valley from Australia in 1973 and has been playing center field with the Pegasus team almost ever since.

Heaney says he likes the camaraderie with the other Southern California players. “Cricket is very social; we tend to party together a lot,� he said.

According to Wong, it is love of the sport that brings them together.

Wong says the association does have a juniors program but that many Americans find the game confusing and too difficult to learn.

“It’s not like soccer, where you run around for awhile and then it’s over,� Wong said. “It’s a complex game.�

Wong says the games at Woodley Park, off Woodley Avenue between Burbank and Victory boulevards, do attract spectators.

“When we have teams from out of town, or other countries, sometimes we have as many as 3,000 watching,� he said. Usually the number is between 30 and 300. The curious may watch, free of charge.

“People should come with their families and a picnic basket. Bring your own chairs,� Wong said.

Neighborhood Is Getting Stoned

There’s a part of Van Nuys that has been getting stoned for about eight years now.

Stoned in the sense that the Stones are making their presence known.

Alan Stone is a graphic designer who lends aid and support to his wife, Terry. Terry Stone is, quite simply, a dynamo.

The couple and their son live in an area she has named the Pocket, bordered by Balboa Boulevard, Hayvenhurst Avenue and the Bull Creek Wash.

“Alan and I moved to this area from Silver Lake eight years ago when I was pregnant with my son, Christopher. We wanted to live in a real neighborhood,� she said.

“I had been totally burned out by all of the activist work I’d done in the ‘60s and ‘70s. None of it seemed to have done any good.�

“All I wanted was to raise my child and be active in my own community. I was sick of those organizations that said what a good cause they were, then took your money and disappeared,� she said.

Once an activist, always an activist applies to Terry.

First it was the Pocket Patrol, then it was Pocket Notes.

The Pocket Patrol is the neighborhood group she helped organize; it watches out for anything untoward in the neighborhood.

“When we started getting graffitied, we staked out the area at night with a lot of people with walkie-talkies and the help of our local police. We caught the perpetrators and haven’t had much of a problem since,� she said.

Pocket Notes is a monthly neighborhood newspaper the Stones started about three years ago. “Alan and I do it for the 250 families in the Pocket. We keep everyone up-to-date on what’s going on,� she said.

It’s not about neighborhood barbecues, although Terry Stone says the neighborhood has them. “It’s about who is moving in and out, police problems, schools, things that impact us in our little community,� she said. “We get items from people all over the Pocket and even from people who have moved out.�

Stone says you would never mistake her area for Encino.

“We are middle class, working class, and there’s a wonderful racial and age mix. What is going on is that we are taking pride in our neighborhood and we are looking out for each other,� she said.

You would never mistake Stone for a lady who lunches, either.

One of her favorite community events is “caroling� throughout the neighborhood in observance of Halloween. “We put a karaoke machine on a skateboard and go around and have a ball,� she said.

Overheard:

“I don’t want to play in the boys’ soccer league because I’m too good to play in the girls’ league. I want to play in the boys’ league because I like boys.�