On a pristine field at the Philadelphia Cricket Club, 22 men in white pants and cable-knit sweaters take their places. They may be gathered in the U.S. today, but most of the men grew up playing in countries where cricket is serious business.

Tobago, Guyana, India, Scotland — they come from all over. But here, at least, there isn’t exactly an abundance of experienced players around. So when they find them, they scoop them up.

That’s how Aussie David Anstice got recruited by a teammate.

“I said, ‘How do you know I can even play?’ He said, ‘You’re Australian aren’t you?’ ” Anstice recalls. “I said, ‘How do you know I’m any good?’ He said, ‘If you’ve only got one eye you’ll work on our team!’ “

The pickings didn’t use to be so slim. Though it’s a mystery to many Americans these days, the sport was once as big as any game in the U.S. And in fact — with its bat and ball, and a scoring system based on runs — cricket even looks a little like baseball, America’s famous pastime.

That’s partly why people like Tom Culp see potential in bringing the sport back.

“There are about 25,000 cricket players in the United States,” says Culp, who helps organize an international cricket festival in Philadelphia every year. “And largely on the two coasts, with pockets in Colorado, Texas of all places.”

That’s exactly where the Cricket All-Stars will be playing. Two dream teams of retired greats, the Cricket All-Stars are trying to bring the wicket back into the spotlight, with a three-game tournament in New York City, Houston and Los Angeles, where they’ll be playing this weekend at Dodger Stadium.

Among the players are two of the sport’s biggest stars: Shane “The King of Spin” Warne of Australia, and India’s Sachin “Master Blaster” Tendulkar — the sport’s most famous batter.

Sachin Tendulkar, during a match against New Zealand in 2012. “If you go to India and you say ‘Sachen Tendulkar,’ then he’s God,” says Samar Jha, a cricket player in Philadelphia. “He is next to God.” Vivek Prakash/Reuters/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Vivek Prakash/Reuters/Landov

“I have to watch Sachin,” says Samar Jha, a Philadephia Cricket Club player who has box seats to one of the games. “I have been following his game since childhood. If you go to India and you say ‘Sachin Tendulkar,’ then he’s God. He is next to God.”

Now, whether that deity status brings fans is another matter. It’s hard to tell with the crowds so far; New York’s match drew 30,000 fans, in Houston about 25,000.

Philadelphia player Andy Bhattacharya doesn’t think the All-Star matches are likely to win skeptics over. But he’s holding out hope for the short-format games popular today – the kind the All-Stars are playing now.

“A lot of cricket matches get to the last pitch. You get goose bumps and your hair is standing and you’re wondering what is going to happen,” he says. “If ever the American public gets a taste of that, that will be the day that this sport will arrive in this country.”

University of Missouri football players take the field tonight days after many of them threatened not to play unless school president Tim Wolfe resigned. Wolfe stepped down on Tuesday amid a scandal over his handling of racial threats on campus.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The University of Missouri Tigers meet the Brigham Young Cougars on the football field tonight. Now, that’s a matchup that was certainly scheduled but was, for a moment, in doubt. That’s because dozens of members of the Missouri football team said they would boycott the game in support of student protests against racist incidents at the school and what critics saw as the university’s tepid response to them. The week began with MU’s president and chancellor stepping down and ended with the school’s head football coach announcing yesterday that he is resigning for health reasons. Frank Morris of member station KCUR in Kansas City has been following all this. He’s covering the game tonight. He’s going to bring us up to date on how things stand now. Hi, Frank, thanks for joining us.

FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: Hi, Michel, glad to be here.

MARTIN: Frank, as we mentioned, it’s been a difficult week at the University of Missouri in Columbia. But you were telling us this has actually been building for some time.

MORRIS: That’s true. There are incidents in past years that the university didn’t address very squarely. But just this semester, there’s been kind of a drumbeat of racist name-calling and vandalism.

MARTIN: What really seemed to bring the story to national attention was the participation of the football team though, right?

MORRIS: That’s true. The football team, 30 players got involved this time last week. And then when their coach, Gary Pinkel, came out and supported them on Twitter – within 24 hours of that, the president of the university was gone, and then the chancellor left a short time later. But it was the football player’s participation that really brought in the national media on this story.

MARTIN: Why is that, though? What role does the football team play at the school?

MORRIS: You know, the football team controls a lot of money. And if they had gone through with the boycott of this coming game, they would’ve had to pay Brigham Young University a million dollars.

MARTIN: Well, what are some of the other expenses that they would’ve had to pay? They had a contract to use the NFL stadium, for example…

MORRIS: That’s correct. The contract to use the NFL stadium here, ticket sales, TV revenue, I think, would’ve been involved and also merchandise sales.

MARTIN: What’s been happening on campus since the president stepped down earlier this week? Could you bring us up to date on that?

MORRIS: Yeah. There were death threats – threats of a mass shooting targeting black students on Tuesday evening. And classes – a number of classes were cancelled. Some businesses shut down on Wednesday. Police arrested two men in – associated with those threats. Neither one were close to the university. It’s not clear that either one of them had the means to carry out those kinds of threats.

MARTIN: And as we reported though, coach Gary Pinkel announced yesterday that he’s resigning at the end…

MORRIS: Right.

MARTIN: …Of the football season. Does his role in the recent events have anything to do with his resignation?

MORRIS: He says not. You know, he’s being treated for lymphoma. As of last May, doctors are treating him for lymphoma. He got some tests last month – toward the end of last month, and he says those tests were the things that put it over in his mind that he should resign and live out the rest of his years paying attention to his family rather than the football team.

MARTIN: Frank, you were telling us that this game is actually not played on campus. This is actually about 120 miles away at the NFL stadium in Kansas City, which suggests it’s probably actually more for the alumni. But are people still excited about it?

MORRIS: Oh, yeah. People are excited. I think there’s an expectation that this team unified in the protests and having won this big battle with the university is going to be really jacked coming out. You know, they play at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, which is where the Kansas City Chiefs play. They’ve got special uniforms – all-white uniforms for this game. And they had a special T-shirt that they were promoting for the game. It’s called, you know, white out. And that T-shirt has disappeared from the Internet. They’re no longer selling that one.

MARTIN: All right. Well, that’s KCUR’s Frank Morris in Kansas City. Thanks, Frank.

MORRIS: Thank you, Michel.

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Russia has been provisionally suspended by international track and field’s governing body. The decision could keep Russian athletes out of next year’s Olympic Games in Brazil.

Transcript

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

We are following the developing story in Paris, where up to 60 people have been killed in shootings around the city and people have been taken hostage. We’ll update that story as we get information. Right now we’re going to talk to NPR’s Moscow correspondent Corey Flintoff about the Russian doping scandal. Russia’s athletic federation has been suspended from world competitions. It’s being called provisional, and it takes effect immediately.

And, Corey, how did this decision come about?

COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: Well, of course, this week we had a report from an independent commission that reported that Russia was involved in state-supported doping. The most damning allegation in that report was that the top Russian sports officials, up to and including the sports minister, had to have known about this program and may in fact have supported it. So the International Association of Athletic Federations – that governs world track and field events – voted 22-1 to suspend Russia. And this is huge for them. It’s something that this organization had to do. The independent report was extremely critical of the International Association. It said it allowed Russian athletes to compete in things like 2012 Summer Olympics when they were known to have suspicious doping profiles. So the International Association and its chief, Sebastian Coe, are under a lot of pressure right now to show that they can deal with a huge scandal like this in their sport.

MCEVERS: I mean, does this mean that Russia will be able to participate in the Olympics, going forward?

FLINTOFF: Well, the provisional suspension means that as of now Russian athletes won’t be allowed to compete in next year’s summer Olympics or in another big track and field competition, the World Athletics Series. And that was the big fear among Russian sports officials. You know, some of them have been making conciliatory statements over the past couple of days saying that they would do anything, basically, to get themselves into compliance. The sports minister, Vitaliy Mutko, said that he would fire anyone who was involved in this, he’d start a new anti-doping program. But I don’t know whether he realized how serious this was going to be. This also means that Russia won’t be allowed to host important competitions, and they were slated to host the 2016 World Junior Championships next year.

MCEVERS: And what about now, I mean, will Russia refuse to accept this suspension?

FLINTOFF: Well, the international body says if Russia rejects this punishment it can be turned into a full suspension, and that would guarantee that Russian athletes wouldn’t be allowed to compete in Rio this summer. If it does accept the suspension then there’s a list of criteria that Russia will have to meet to get reinstated, and that will likely mean completely revamping its anti-doping program that was found to be noncompliant with the international rules today. The question is whether Russia can clean up its act in time to send athletes to Rio. You know, one issue is that many of the Russian sports officials who were named in the commission report are still in charge, and they show no signs of voluntarily leaving.

MCEVERS: Very quickly, Corey, how are Russians reacting to this news?

FLINTOFF: Well, judging from what we’ve heard from Russian officials before the decision, there may well be some pushback. President Putin called for an independent investigation, but he said explicitly that clean athletes shouldn’t be punished for the actions of those who use drugs, and that’s widely seen as a warning that Russia might not accept a blanket suspension.

MCEVERS: That’s NPR’s Corey Flintoff in Moscow.

Thanks so much.

FLINTOFF: Thank you Kelly.

Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.