CRICKET CROWD; SPORT'S LEGENDS COME TO WOODLEY PARK.

Byline: Robert Monroe Staff Writer

Sunday just couldn't have been better for cricket fan Uriel Parchment.

He's traveled to South Africa and Australia to see test matches. He's paid $5,000 to fly to two-week-long games. But he had only about a 40-mile drive from West Covina on day four of a five-day international match held at Woodley Avenue Park. And he got to hobnob with some of cricket's legends during a tournament less about sport than about bringing good news to believers in a land of heathens.

``He was like cricket's Sandy Koufax,'' said Parchment, when introducing Michael Holdin, a Jamaican bowler who had a 90 mph fastball when he played in the 1970s.

``Who?'' said Holdin, a commentator on the match who has been broadcasting it to 69 countries and 500 million fans around the world.

``Sandy Koufax,'' said Parchment.

``Oh, he's a pitcher. Yeah,'' said Holdin with a thick Caribbean accent.

Blimey!

To the commentators and players in the match between India and Australia, the event sponsored by the Southern California Cricket Association signaled the planting of a flag in unexplored territory. This could be the flash point, they said, of a movement spreading from a few thousand devotees in America to, well, a few more thousand.

``That's all you can hope for in the States,'' said Ian Chappell, captain of Australia's national team for four years. ``You're talking a population of 270 million? So even if you get a small niche, it's still a big market.''

And one filled with expatriates from the lands where the steering wheel is on the passenger side of the car, tea wins out over coffee and players like Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara can't go out in public without being mobbed by adoring fans. In other words, places outside the United States.

``If cricket is going to become a worldwide sport, we need to tap into America,'' said Australian batter Ryan Campbell.

The International Cricket Council chose the Woodley Park pitch for an exhibition site because it is one of a handful of natural turf pitches in North America and probably the best maintained, said Cricket Association Vice President Dalton Wilson.

The match, which concludes Tuesday, has little significance in the grand scheme of the game, where top matches last five days, there are 100 ``overs,'' (nearest equivalent: innings), teams score hundreds of runs and matches are interrupted by lunch.

The players at Woodley Park were of a skill level the equivalent of a Triple-A baseball team.

No matter to the fans in tented outfield seats surrounding a round field. They jubilantly followed every over in the match, even after Australia had decisively won. Some occasionally invaded the outfield with Australian and Indian flags in tow to rally their fellow displaced countrymen. The smell of curry wafted through the air. Caribbean fans were out in force to cheer Australia, who play in a more aggressive style like players from their home countries.

``Aussie fans in the stands, if you're here, clap your hands,'' a pocket of unshirted fans hollered.

Despite a worldwide audience in the millions, the number of spectators who didn't know what was going on might have been limited to two. Melissa Wickman and Parker Hudnut of Culver City came to watch the sport Wickman is helping spread among Los Angeles schoolchildren through the organization she works for, the Amateur Athletic Foundation.

Though the foundation has joined with the Cricket Association to teach children the game, it doesn't mean Wickman knew what was going on.

``Australia's winning, we know that much,'' she said.

Commentator Barry Richards was one of South Africa's greatest players ever, said Parchment, the big fan. Richards wore a shirt and tie as one of the television commentators and wondered from the announcer's booth why American baseball players needed gloves. Cricket outfielders use their bare hands to catch a ball three times harder than a baseball.

Cricket is a game too intricate to explain easily, he said. ``You have to be brought up with it to understand it,'' he said.

No worries, though, he said. American football baffles him.

``All they do is throw the ball in the air and then stop. That's all I can see,'' he said. ``It's just mind-blowing to me.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) Australia bowls to India in game four of the American Challenge cricket match held Sunday at Woodley Avenue Park in Van Nuys.

(2) Fans cheer on their team, as Australia plays India in the American Challenge cricket match.

Phil McCarten/Staff Photographer