Move over Yankees? New York students take up...cricket

By Karen Brettell

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Trinidad native John Mitchell dabbled in basketball and baseball after arriving in the United States at the age of 9. But it took the introduction of cricket at his New York school to find a sport he felt at home with.

"I never got the hang of it," the 17-year-old says of baseball, even though, like cricket, it involves hitting a ball with a bat.

But cricket "feels nice and irie to me," he said using a Caribbean expression for well-being.

New York, a city famously addicted to the baseball rivalry between fans of the Yankees and the Mets, this spring became the first U.S. school district to introduce cricket as a sport in public high schools.

Mitchell now captains a team from Automotive High School, a Brooklyn high school that competes in the New York City cricket league.

Most of the players in the league are from the West Indies, India or Pakistan, where cricket is a national passion.

Some have been lobbying for a cricket league for years, as American sports like baseball, basketball and American football failed to ignite the same interest.

School sports officials say they attracted more interest in the league than they originally expected, with 14 teams, and expect the league to grow.