How a lover of many sports from the USA came to be a fan of cricket as well
Tim Lowell06-Jul-2016I’m an American baseball and football fan, and I love cricket.There are those around the world who believe that I don’t exist, and I may be the only one – based on my attempts at outreach on social media sites – but I do in fact exist.At the moment, I am bingeing on the Caribbean Premier League. I can stream the entire league for a few bucks, and I have taken full advantage of the offer.A little background. I grew up in upstate New York, and my introduction to sports was the New York Mets of Tom Seaver, Jon Matlack, Jerry Koosman and Buddy Harrelson. My earliest sports memory was Buddy getting into a fight with Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds at second base during the 1973 National League Championship Series, which the Mets won in five games. My mom, dad and grandmother had all followed the Brooklyn Dodgers until the Dodgers unceremoniously decamped to California, and the excitement in my house around the Mets’ improbable run to the pennant in ’73 hooked me onto baseball. I went on to play Little League, Babe Ruth League, high school baseball and American Legion baseball until I stopped being able to make contact with the increasingly blurry fastballs thrown at me, and stopped being able to track the hard-hit line drives in the outfield. I am still a Mets fan 40-something years later. I thrilled to the great 1986 World Series championship team when I was in college, and suffered through all the missed opportunities since, including last season.I am also a huge NFL fan, and the New England Patriots have always been my team. I sign up for NFL Sunday Ticket every season, so I can watch all 16 of the Patriots’ regular season games. The Patriots have rewarded my fan investment handsomely these days with four Super Bowl titles and two other appearances in the Tom Brady/Bill Belichick era, albeit with plenty of controversy.My insatiable appetite for sports has taken my in many other directions. Tiger Woods’ run in the PGA was an obsession, and I’m a big fan of Michelle Wie in the LPGA. I check in with the English Premier League on weekend mornings, and I follow the USA’s men’s and women’s national teams in international soccer tournaments. I’ve tried and failed to follow the NHL and the NBA, but I’ll still watch a hockey or basketball game if there’s nothing else on.I had never considered cricket as a sport to follow until I started watching online, where the shenanigans in the British government often took a back seat to whatever Test match was on the radio; and then, especially, the podcast with ESPNcricinfo’s own Andy Zaltzman. On one episode, Andy was paying more attention to the Ashes than he was to whatever John Oliver was saying. After I heard that, I needed to see what was so engrossing.My first Ashes was the 2010-11 edition in Australia. It took about three matches to understand the rules and generally what was happening, but somewhere during the Perth match I became enthralled. Australia had dropped the second match badly, after a first-match draw, but battled back and destroyed England out west using local knowledge of the surface. I was intrigued that the results could be so drastically different in different locations, and felt compelled to tune in to see if England would rebound to win the series or if Australia could find a way to sweep the final two matches. I spent the Christmas holiday watching the fourth and fifth tests. I was now a full-on cricket fan.Since 2010, I’ve watched two World Cups, two World T20s, three more Ashes series, and countless other matches that were available on WatchESPN. Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar’s Cricket All-Stars came to Houston – where I live – last November and, of course, I was travelling that week and had to miss it. Finally, though, I’m going to see a professional game live.I bought tickets to the Trinbago Knight Riders v St Kitts & Nevis Patriots game in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I will be attending right before my wife and I go on a cruise. I’ve been watching every game I can of the CPL T20 season to familiarise myself with the teams and players. I am looking forward to the constant drumming, costumes, dancing, Caribbean food and drink, and hard hits that I am seeing in the games so far. About the only regret I will have is that I didn’t get tickets to the Jamaica Tallawahs game to watch #UniverseBoss himself, Chris Gayle. I watched his methodical destruction of Trinbago this week, and my respect for his batting ability is right up there with my respect for Tom Brady’s quarterbacking and Yoenis Céspedes’ all-around play.I hope to keep watching the tournament and then write about my experience at the Florida match. Stay tuned.Want to be featured on Inbox? Send your articles to us here, with “Inbox” in the subject line.