CAN CRICKET BE THE NEW TICKET?; LOCALS TRY TO POPULARIZE SPORT.

Byline: Kevin Modesti Daily News Staff Writer

As soccer has gained a foothold in the United States in the 1990s, the other English-born ballgame has watched in quiet envy.

Cricket - widely held to be too slow and polite for American tastes - has been the all-too-secret hobby of English-accented immigrants like the actors who formed the Hollywood Cricket Club in Griffith Park in the 1930s.

But the game's local leaders are ready to play catchup. They are declaring a four-team international tournament - today through Sunday in Van Nuys - the start of a long-shot campaign to make cricket a major U.S. sport.

``The fact that international teams want to come here and play is itself a major step forward,'' said David Sentance, a Lincolnshire-born financial adviser who is treasurer of the Southern California Cricket Association. ``What we've really got to do is develop the grass roots.''

The Independence Cup tournament, billed as the biggest ever held here, features teams representing Jamaica, India, the United States and the SCCA in a series of one-day matches.

Play starts at 10:30 each morning and lasts until about 5:30 p.m. at the Woodley Cricket Grounds, east of Woodley Avenue and south of Victory Boulevard in the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area. Organizers say they expect a crowd of 5,000 on the Fourth of July, when Jamaica faces a team from the local Jamaican community and India faces the SCCA.

They hope the tournament will show that Los Angeles is equipped to host the 2001 International Cricket Council Trophy competition, the World Cup for ``B-level'' cricketing nations.

``This (week's tournament) is important because we're trying to project cricket in Southern California onto the world scene,'' said Uriel Parchment, an insurance man from Jamaica who coordinated the first U.S. visit in 11 years by the island's cricketers, including Jimmy Adams, Courtney Walsh and Franklin Rose. ``The best way to do that is to bring top international players to display their talent.''

At one time, Parchment points out, cricket was the most popular ballgame in North America. Then, along came the American Revolution and cricket was among the English cultural staples the colonies rejected. Also, baseball, football and basketball were invented.

Now, in seeking popularity in the United States, cricket finds itself about half a century behind soccer.

``Cricket is still an arcane sport to most of the American public,'' Sentance admitted.

Yes, a game in which fielders' positions include ``silly mid-on'' and ``short fine leg'' could take some getting used to. Besides, if you think baseball games drag on, would you have the patience for a bat-and-ball sport whose major international matches last five days (including breaks for lunch and tea)?

But members of the 31-year-old SCCA - which fields 27 teams from San Diego to Santa Barbara - would point out that cricket is no less macho than baseball. Fast bowlers (pitchers) can reach 100 mph, and their deliveries bounce, often upredictably, in front of the batsmen. Batted balls are fielded with bare hands. The balls are harder and heavier than baseballs.

Maybe the time is right for cricket in America. Just as soccer has appealed to Hispanic immigrants, cricket has a following among the growing Indian, Pakistani and West Indian communities here. Because many of these new immigrants work in the computer fields, they are flooding the Internet with cricket chatter.

SCCA leaders outlined their grand plans in a poorly attended press conference at the Woodley fields on Monday - trying to expand England's sporting empire to the San Fernando Valley on the very morning the British Empire withdrew from Hong Kong.

They touted cricket as an ideal schoolyard sport because it cultivates discipline and respect for authority - ``nobody spits on the umpire in cricket,'' said SCCA team manager Pat Patnaik - and because it requires players to make sound decisions quickly. Unlike baseball, they pointed out, there are no coaches on the field to tell players what to do.

``It builds the character,'' said Leo Magnus, a transplanted Jamaican who coaches cricket to Compton school kids, including a group he took to London's fabled Lords cricket ground on a tour sponsored by record and insurance companies.

Of course, this talk of discipline and authority might not appeal to kids as much as to their parents and teachers.

But here's something young American athletes might appreciate: Unlike baseball, in which a batter holds the spotlight for a matter of seconds, a good cricketer can stay at bat indefinitely. ``You can be out there for two or three hours, being a hero,'' said Sentance, who played for the UCLA cricket team, and captains the Victoria Cricket Club in Oxnard.

Sentance thinks the time might be right for cricket precisely because it's a refined game of finesse.

``I think the American sporting public is becoming more sophisticated,'' he said. ``The old blood-and-guts approach to sports is going away. I don't think they like Mike Tyson biting somebody's ear off. I think that's one reason basketball is popular - it's ballet in motion.''

Michael Jordan, meet Jimmy Adams. The tournament begins today with Jamaica facing the United States on Field 1 and India taking on the SCCA on Field 2.

UNDERSTANDING CRICKET

It's played on a grass field between two 11-man teams, which take turns batting and fielding, each trying to win by scoring more runs than the opponent. Sounds like baseball. But cricket, whose rules were first codified nearly 250 years ago in England, is different in several respects:

The field has no foul territory, batters run between two wickets (sets of wooden stumps) instead of around four bases, and bats are flat-sided.

An ``out'' is usually recorded by catching a batted ball in the air (like baseball), by knocking over the wicket a batsman is running toward (like a forceout), or by bowling (pitching) the ball past the batsman and hitting his wicket (like a strikeout).

The batsman doesn't have to run after hitting the ball along the ground if he thinks he would be thrown out. Thus, a player can stay at-bat for hours, scoring dozens or even hundreds of runs. Knocking the ball over the field's distant boundary (like a home run) is worth six runs.

The bowler gets a running start, but he must deliver the ball in a windmill motion, with his elbow in a fixed position. A good bowler can make the ball swing (curve) in flight, and they bounce the ball in front of the batsman, adding to the deception and/or intimidation.

Major international ``test matches'' can go on for five days, but most professional matches are played in the one-day format that will be used for this week's Independence Cup tournament at the Woodley Cricket Grounds in Van Nuys.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, Box

PHOTO (1--color) no caption (Cricket players)

(2) Jamacian Julian Royal works out with his cricket team at the Woodley Cricket Fields in Van Nuys for an upcoming tournament.

Hans Gutknecht / Daily News

BOX: Understanding Cricket (see text)