A little bit of England in Manatee

Strap on your pads ladies and gentlemen, the 25th annual Sarasota International Cricket festival is about to get under way.
Cricket, that most English of sports, might not be hugely popular over here just yet, but each year the Sarasota International Cricket Club assembles teams from around the world for a four-day tourney. This year there are 15 outfits coming from the United States, United Kingdom, Cayman Islands, Mexico City and Toronto. Play will run from 9:30am to 5pm from Thursday and continue on Friday and Saturday, with a new game starting every hour. Sunday is ‘finals day’ with play scheduled to start at 10am.
“It’s a family afternoon,” Laurence Parry, president of the cricket club, told the Bradenton Herald. “We’re expecting 200 or 300 Saturday, we’re hoping for 600 to 700 on Sunday.”
Admission is free, and the day will include family-friendly activities and refreshments.
Among the invited guests will be four professional players from Glamorgan, South Wales, who will no doubt appreciate the warm break from a cold winter and a chance to play some out-of-season cricket.
Cricket is said to have begun here after a drinking session at Siesta Key’s Salty Dog resulted in a duel between baseball aficionados and cricket lovers on the beach. The upshot was the formation of the Sarasota cricket club.
If you want to go along, the cricket field is located one-half mile east of Lorraine Road on University Parkway.
And if you want to know more about cricket, there are a number of websites you can look at. However, it’s probably best to think of it as baseball with a different shaped bat and just take a look at the famous description of the sport.

Cricket: You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that goes in goes out and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. When both sides have been in and out including not outs, that's the end of the game.

Got that?