PSAL cricket championship approaching as World Cup gets underway

In June, Long Island will host some of the must-watch games in the International Cricket Council’s T20 World Cup, including games between rivals like India and Pakistan.

And in New York City, high schoolers are playing must-win games in the Public School Athletic League’s cricket playoffs, like Tuesday’s match between Thomas A. Edison High School and Stuyvesant High School.

“We have a really good chance of winning it this year, and I’m feeling really good about it,” Ashikul Araf, 17, said.

Araf is a senior and Thomas Edison’s captain.

“I’m an all-rounder. I love batting, I love bowling, I love fielding. I just love being in the field and playing cricket. It brings a lot of joy to me,” Araf said.

And his team is feeling really confident about their chances.

“We lost our first two because we were not that much prepared. But the last eight games we won. We defeated the five-time champions, John Adams — twice,” Anmolpreet Singh, 18, a junior, said.

Cricket may not immediately come to mind when you think of high school sports, but the city has had a league since 2008, which has grown to 30 teams, with about 460 students playing citywide.

A quick, oversimplified primer: One team bats while the other fields. The batting team aims to score runs, by hitting the ball and then running from one wicket to the other to score a single, or by hitting it out of the oval to score more runs. The fielding team bowls the ball to batters and tries to get batters out, by either knocking down wickets behind their batting position, or catching the balls they hit. Once all the batters are out, the other team takes over batting and tries to beat their score to win.

“It’s not like baseball where it’s like if you get out or you foul out, whatever it may be, you get a second life when you run through the lineup,” Jami-Lyn Butto-Nifong, the team’s coach, said. “If you get out as a batsman, that’s it. You’re out for the game till you’re back, until you’re fielding. So it’s really passionate. There’s a lot of emotions and they form a really strong bond because of that.”

Each game is a knock-out in the playoffs, so the stakes are high, especially for seniors.

“Once you’re a senior, like, that’s literally your last chance to win it for the team and everything. So it would be nice to win it,” senior Nibrasul Sami, 18, said.

Thomas Edison defeated Stuyvesant to advance to the next round, by a score of 207 to 59. They won again on Friday, beating Franklin D. Roosevelt High School. They play again Tuesday, and they’re hoping to make it all the way to the finals, which will be played on June 15.