The Washburn University cricket team played against Avila University Friday, Oct. 4, from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. The tournament took place at Avila University’s football stadium where people came and went throughout the game.

This was the first time Washburn participated in a cricket match which is primarily outside of traditional American sports. Andrew Vogel, former international student recruitment and retention coordinator, contacted Washburn for the tournament to take place.

Mohammad Asfaque, junior mathematics major, was one of the organizers of the cricket match as well as one of the players. He talked about how he wants to expand cricket across Washburn.

“[Cricket] is not a thing yet at Washburn, it is on the paper but it has not been registered,” Asfaque said. “We are thinking of registering an Ichabod Cricket Club and I am going to be the president…I am still looking for advisors.”

The cricket match ended in a tie of 1-1; the first game was won by Avila and the next by Washburn. The tournament will consist of two matches, the second one being a decider match for who gets the trophy. 

Andrew Vogel, currently working as the vice president of the international student success services at Avila University, saw people were interested in cricket at Avila, and through social media, he also saw Asfaque’s interest in the sport. Asfaque and other Nepalese students have the NepaBods Cricket Club, which welcomes anyone interested in cricket for occasional matches outside of campus.

“I have been following NepaBods soccer team and then it looked like they started the NepaBods cricket team and I was like ‘Wow,’ so we at Avila University, we also started a cricket team about a year ago. So, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get the team together to play,’” Vogel said.

Asfaque went ahead and described how he and his club members came up with the name NepaBods.

“We are called Ichabods, and we just removed the ‘Icha’ and added ‘Nepa’ so we have a Nepalese cricket team outside but we wanted something inside Washburn too and that’s why we are naming it the Ichabod Cricket Club,” Asfaque said.

Students from both Avila and Washburn helped organize the matches.

“We had some student announcers and then we also had some staff and faculty. It was a pretty big deal for the campus, so a lot of people were invited,” Vogel said. 

Cricket is a huge sport in Nepal and India and bringing that experience to Washburn is new for Asfaque. He shared his idea on how he wants to introduce cricket to people.

“In the Washburn cricket team, right now, they are all Nepalese but we are going to make it big and expand and then have international students or American students,” Asfaque said.

Avila University had league players who had professional experience playing cricket. Despite the skill differential, Washburn’s team managed to come through. 

Asfaque shared his experience about the match on Friday.

“We showed character, we fought really hard,” Asfaque said. “Personally, I didn’t believe that I would win the second match but the rest of the team believed in me and they believed in themselves.”

Asfaque is hopeful to have the decider match at Yager stadium. He has been working on setting a proposal to the officials with a possible chance of inviting the presidents of the universities and other staff to the next match. 

Edited by Morgan Albrecht and Jeremy Ford