Sonoma Gullies cricket club brings international sport to Santa Rosa

Satyajit “Sonny” Patel is used to the suspicious stares from the customs agents as he makes his way through American airports. That long wooden paddle with the rubber grips - is it some sort of weapon?

“It’s a cricket bat,” Patel explains.

Among the many challenges faced by the Sonoma Gullies cricket club, which include finding a permanent home pitch and balancing the various leagues in which some of the cricketers play, is explaining their sport to curious but befuddled Americans.

Here’s the recap of a recent match, as presented by the International Cricket Council:

“At stumps, Pakistan was 230 for 2, needing 147 more to secure the series currently levelled at 1-1. At one point, Pakistan was 13 for 2, but an unbroken 217-run stand between Masood and Younis for the third wicket nullified Sri Lanka’s advantage after it had set Pakistan a mammoth 377, thanks largely to Angelo Mathews’s fifth Test century in the morning session, which also saw Imran Khan bag his maiden five-for.”

To an experienced cricket fan, that sounds like Jon Miller melodiously calling the fourth inning of a Giants-Rockies game. To the rest of us, it’s a code in need of breaking.

But here’s the thing: Beneath the exotic terminology, cricket has a somewhat familiar look. The ball is very similar to a baseball - shinier, a shade smaller, a little harder. One guy throws it, another guy tries to hit it and some other guys run around a field trying to catch it.

“In the end,” said Sushil Kumar, another member of the Gullies, “it’s a ball-and-bat sport.”

And the Gullies, it turns out, are quite good at it.

The teammates, most living in Santa Rosa or Rohnert Park and many of them software engineers, have been playing cricket informally together for years. One of them - Anu Shah, who lives in Santa Rosa and is vice president of engineering at Cambrian Innovation - used to organize friendly matches as part of the North Bay Indo-American Association’s annual summer picnic, using a tennis ball rather than the traditional leather-bound cricket ball. Frequently, it would be Medtronic employees against everyone else. They also played low-key matches against a local Punjabi association.

Some of these guys were on teams in Marin or the East Bay, and eventually they noticed that the talent level at the Santa Rosa gatherings was just as strong. Also, the less experienced players yearned to try their hands at real cricket. So four years ago, a core of players that included Shah, Kumar, Patel and Nadeem Solanki formed the Gullies.

“Gully” is a defensive position in cricket. More to the point, it is subcontinent slang for an alleyway, the sort of place Indian kids put to use for cricket matches. It’s the equivalent of calling your baseball team the Sandlots.

Right from the start, the Gullies proved their worth. Their first official competition was in a tournament called Last Man Stands, and they had to go up against an opposing team that included Nick Compton, who had played with the English national squad.

“Test cricket, that’s the highest level of cricket played internationally, and this guy played for England,” Kumar said. “He brought the team here. And we were playing our first organized game, and we ended up beating them. And they were like, who are these guys?”

Because the Gullies don’t belong to an established league, they tend to play a lot of matches against other “social clubs” like Marin Cricket Club, which dates back at least to 1932, and Napa Valley Cricket Club, which plays its games at the Napa County Fairgrounds in Calistoga.

Abilities vary on the team, but Kumar is a skilled batsman - he is currently ranked No. 2 in America by Last Man Stands, an affiliation of far-flung teams, and 11 Gullies appear in the top 100 - and Solanki bowled (or pitched) in the highly competitive C Division in Hyderabad, India, before emigrating to the United States at 20. He is now 32.

There are younger recruits, too. Kumar’s son Suryansh, who just graduated from Technology High in Rohnert Park and is headed to UC Santa Cruz in the fall, is considered a top prospect.

Suryansh Kumar was a year old when the family left India for California. He is a typical American kid, except for his favorite athletic event.

“I run cross country and play baseball. I’ve done wrestling,” Kumar said. “I’ve done so many sports, and I always come back to cricket. It’s just where I find my mental peace.”

Like a lot of cricketers, Kumar appreciates the extreme dexterity and hand-eye coordination the sport demands. A cricket bowler releases at 22 yards away from the wickets that the batsman is trying to protect, slightly farther than the distance from pitching rubber to home plate in baseball. But he gets to take a running start. Bowlers like to skip the ball off the ground, shooting it directly at the batsman (which is why he wears enough padding to make Barry Bonds jealous) or veering it rapidly away from him depending on the spin.

A good hurler like Solanki can bring it faster than 80 miles per hour. Hitting a cricket ball is not for the timid.

“I played baseball in high school, because I thought it was the same concept and a hell of a lot easier,” Suryansh Kumar said. “The easiest pitch that you can get in cricket is pitched in baseball to you. I’m like, this is perfect! I was hitting triples and home runs in every single game.”

Kumar turned 18 in February, and his party happened to coincide with a Cricket World Cup match between arch-rivals India and Pakistan. (“They’re like my Giants,” he said of the Indian national team.) So at 6 p.m. the Tech High kids gathered around the TV and ate dinner.

“I explained the game to them maybe like 10 minutes before the game started, and they loved it,” Kumar said.

One aspect that appeals to baseball players: A cricket batsman isn’t necessarily done when he makes contact. Depending on his performance, he can stay in the batting crease for ages, taking swing after swing. A concept that doesn’t translate so well: Test matches that last five days.

Many cite cricket as the second most popular sport in the world, trailing only soccer. Hundreds of millions play it worldwide, mostly in the former colonies of the British Empire. But could it ever gain a real foothold here? And do the cricketers really care?

“I do care, and I do know that it’s going to be very popular pretty soon,” said Solanki, who lives in Corte Madera and works in the IT department at San Quentin State Prison. “The reason why I’m saying this is because I’ve played so much cricket here. From that side, I see cricket already growing.”

The Gullies would like to be ambassadors for the sport, but there’s a problem. They don’t have a home pitch, which is why they are not aligned with a league. The team finds practice time at A Place to Play in west Santa Rosa, or on fields in Marin County. But they don’t have a space that is permanently marked for cricket.

The team’s core leaders are intent on changing that. They envision a small cricket league in Sonoma County.

For now the Gullies’ games are sporadic. They are in the midst of an extended hiatus that will end with a match against Marin Cricket Club in Larkspur on Aug. 15.

The break was well timed for Solanki, as it overlapped with Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and prayer. (Several faiths are represented on the Gullies. They welcome anyone who can play cricket.) Even during Ramadan, which ended the evening of July 17, Solanki could practice. In fact, he says cricket helped take his mind off of his appetite as he fasted from sunrise to sunset. And if his energy flags a bit during the holy month, so be it.

“We only get like four hours of sleep,” Solanki said. “So we need to sleep as much as possible. Soon as I get off of work, I go to sleep until 7 o’clock. But then, when it comes to cricket? We’ll do the sleeping later on.”