“The people’s ground,” t20 cricket, and me.
In which a clueless American kind-of-sports-fan attends a British cricket match on a Friday night.
“No, this isn’t Lord’s. This is the people’s ground.”
The Surrey supporter sitting behind me at the Kia Oval on Friday night summed up what changed my mind about cricket.
People love to compare cricket to baseball when they explain it to Americans. It makes sense, after all. There’s a ball, there’s a bat, and there’s an age-old cliche about it being the country’s “pastime.” But as someone raised on West coast college football, “it’s just like baseball” has never meant a whole lot. I’ve always associated baseball with history, nostalgia and a fair share of stuffiness. Since it usually takes a few days longer, and has an even deeper pedigree of privilege, I tossed cricket in the same category: slow, old, and not for me.
I learned at a visit to the historic Lord’s ground that traditional cricket is a days-long event, favored by kings and their mistresses, among other illustrious figures. Grounds are owned by exclusive clubs with years-long waiting lists and early morning queues to enter matches. Cricket supporters, it seems, are very patient people.
Yet at the Oval last week, cricket didn’t feel like any of those things. Surrey faced Kent in a high-scoring and thrilling match. There were no blazers, royalty or Veuve Cliquot from where I sat in the stadium. Instead, rowdy supporters cheered, kids paraded about in face paint, and I learned something new: cricket can be fun.

I’ll spare the reader a full recap of the rules, as I’m sure that YouTube can do a much better job than me, but one detail is worth pointing out. Friday’s match was t20 cricket: a relatively new and shortened version of the game that can be played in just one night. Each team gets one set of 20 overs (120 bowls, the cricket equivalent of baseball pitches) to score runs. Whichever team scores the most, wins. It’s fast-paced and can be, as Friday showed, a bit surprising.
In the first half of the match, home team Surrey was on a roll, hitting the ball out of the pitch again and again to score 6 runs. This was probably the element of the game I best understood, particularly after a beer or two. The sea of people around me cheered and waved signs reading “6.” I happily joined them.
To veer again from the baseball analogy, I might compare my cricket fan experience to my days at college football games. Though a bit lost in the intricacies of the rules, I knew when to cheer for the touchdowns. . .or sixes. I picked up on snippets of the action, sang along to the bits of songs in the stands and soaked up the atmosphere. Like football, t20 cricket seems to be a supporters’ game.
The atmosphere of the stadium felt like both a pub and a playground. While adults sipped beer after beer out of souvenir pint glasses, hordes of kids scrambled around picking up discarded cups for the 1 pound deposit return.
Groups of children were everywhere, many of them sporting headbands topped with cotton-candy colored spiky hair. One dad in front of me commandeered a pack of six teal-clad mini fans, who all rushed to the sidelines when a Surrey player stepped off the pitch to sign a few autographs. Others ducked in and out of their seats in their own cricket club attire and elaborate Surrey face paint from a popular booth among the food carts outside.
As the night went on, the supporters of all ages only got rowdier. Near the end of the second half of the match, when Surrey was bowling, a teenager leapt onto the pitch. He ran across nearly the entire length before being tackled by security guards, much to the delight of the crowd. As the boy was escorted off, he gave a cheeky thumbs-up to the younger fans watching in awe from the side.
Though the Oval is owned by a cricket club, and the exclusive club members had their place in the stands, the atmosphere in the stadium felt far more egalitarian than anything else. From my stance, the people running about with teal glitter face paint and waving Surrey flags were the real guests of honor on Friday night.
At the very end of the match, with just one over left to bowl, the stands were still packed. Despite Surrey’s high scoring first half (“Maybe the highest scoring in the Oval ever,” according to a Surrey fan behind me), Kent pulled through and won the match.
After the fateful winning run, I dashed onto a bus to make my way away from the stadium. From the top deck, I could see wave after wave of Surrey supporters exiting the Oval, disappointed but still full of energy. A few girls at the back of the bus commented loudly on the crowd:
“What are all these people here for? Football?”
“No, this is the Oval. This was a cricket match.”
“Cricket?! All of these people are here to watch cricket?!”
Not long ago, I would have shared in her surprise, but now I think I understand. Cricket may be a long-standing “national pastime” and a “time-honored tradition,” but it is also a game that, at least in this form, kids, adults and sporting novices (like me) can enjoy. The people’s version of the sport, at the people’s ground.

