Haverford College cricket is the area’s best unknown sports tradition. All-arounder Shawn Alexander is one of the sport’s brightest talents.

Weaving through the serving lines at the Haverford College Dining Center -- the DC -- Shawn Alexander hurries through a handful of hugs from attractive coeds.

Alexander, a senior from Olney who emigrated from Trinidad in 1995 and finished No. 2 in his Strawberry Mansion High graduating class four years later, is not only vice-captain of the cricket team on campus, he's also one of the best all-arounders -- players adept at both offense and defense -- Haverford has ever seen. Both quick and large -- 6-foot-2, 214 pounds -- he draws raves from his own coach and from competitors, at least one of whom says Alexander has the talent to play for the U.S. National Team one day.

It's not because he's from the islands either. In fact, he never played organized cricket before beginning life on the

Main Line, where today, Easter Sunday, the sun is shining, the temperature's rising and the earliest buds have popped on dozens of tall trees, which are creating a colorful campus.

After a winter of snow and early spring rains, this is a perfect day for a cricket match, and here, even Easter won't interfere or interrupt: Haverford College fields the nation's only collegiate varsity 11, also known in the cricket world by the Roman numeral XI.

In an hour, at high noon, the Alexander-anchored Fords, who are dressed from head to toe in traditional white uniforms, play host to the Diplomats of Franklin & Marshall, a club team from Lancaster. Still, they know the spring's best matches are on the horizon.

Next up is the Philadelphia International Cricket Festival, which runs May 1-4 at four local venues -- Haverford and also at the Merion, Germantown and Philadelphia Cricket Clubs. In all, 12 teams will play 30 charity matches in the nation's pre-eminent cricket event, which showcases some of the world's greatest talent. The final, on Sunday, May 4, at Philadelphia C.C. at 2 p.m., is open to the public.

For Alexander, who has a tuna hoagie on his tray, the festival is the be-all and end-all of his career. In April 2002, he suffered a season-ending concussion while bowling, or pitching, against F&M. The 2002 Festival went on without him.

"This year's festival is what I've been looking forward to," he says. "We don't have a championship in our season, so we all look to get into the Festival's finals."

Alexander, the youngest of five, is a rare Philadelphia public-school prodigy at Haverford. Last night he helped marry off his youngest sister, Jakinar, 25, in North Philly. Once he joins his teammates around the dining table, they ask how the wedding went.

"Everyone kept asking me when I was getting married," he says, plainly admitting he hid in the back of the pack when it came time to catch the garter belt.

That same night, after hosting a team of alumni, Haverford's cricketers past and present ate at Khajuraho, an Indian restaurant in Ardmore. Alexander, who didn't return to campus from the wedding until after 1 a.m., asks them how many runs each scored against the graduates.

"I will be scoring a century [100 runs]," boasts Joe Kim, a senior from Morrisville, Pa., and Pennsbury High School. (For more about the rules of cricket, see the sidebar on p. 18.)

For Alexander, who alternates sips of water with cranberry juice, it's too easy for his thoughts to turn to last season's injury. He took a direct shot to his head and required six stitches in his right ear. Then he sat out the rest of the spring and last fall. It wasn't until last November that he stopped having headaches.

"It took one bounce off the pitch, came up and clipped my ear," he remembers. "I went to move, but it still got me."

A year later, he's not worried about a repeat in what's only his second week back in the sport.

"I'm keeping my fingers crossed," Alexander says. "I think we should go down to the field."

Leaving the DC, he's busy giving and receiving more hugs. A coed calls him "Dr. Alexander." It makes sense; he's a biology major.

On the way to the field, Alexander, 22, makes it clear that when he came to Philadelphia from Trinidad, he had "no idea" Haverford College existed. In fact, he knew nothing about U.S. cricket teams.

Actually, cricket has been played at Haverford longer than anywhere else in the United States. In 1834, English landscape architect William Carvill, who was designing the year-old campus, introduced the game to the first club of entirely American-born youth. Thirty years later, Haverford hosted the University of Pennsylvania in the first intercollegiate cricket match (only the Harvard-Yale boat race is considered to be an older collegiate athletic contest). In 1896, Haverford sent the first American undergraduate XI to England (a traveling tradition this year's squad will continue with a trip to Barbados later this month). By 1969, the C.C. Morris Cricket Library, which houses the largest collection of cricket literature and memorabilia in the Western Hemisphere, opened in an alcove on the main level of the college's James P. Magill Library.

For more than a century, until the 1920s, cricket was king in Philadelphia. The English millworkers of Germantown and Kensington were the first to bring the game to the area, but teams were quickly organized for bankers, insurance clerks, railroad workers and even young women. Before long, many of the region's most distinguished families played, specifically Main Line bluebloods like the Wisters, Lippincotts, Newhalls, Clarks, Scotts, Thayers, Biddles, Browns, Scattergoods, Bohlens and Morrises. Now, Haverford's cricketers are named Bhuiyan, Genna, Khondker, Patel -- and Amita Tomkoria, a freshman from Tokyo and the lone female on this year's 14-player roster.

In the sport's heyday, as many as 200 cricket teams were active in the region. The Union Cricket Club in Camden (1840) was the first in America. Germantown C.C. (1854) was the most famous. Philadelphia C.C. (1854), Merion (1865) and Belmont (1874), which disbanded and sold its grounds in 1913, soon followed. The Halifax Cup, an official city cricket championship, was awarded between 1880 and 1926. Haverford and Penn were charter members of a small but competitive intercollegiate league.

Of late, cricket is on a real upswing again. The World Cup ran Feb. 8 to March 23 in South Africa. While Australia beat India in the final, the lone local team, the Gentlemen of Philadelphia, went 1-4.

Since one-day cricket began in the early 1970s (World Cup began in 1975; matches used to take as long as five days, but that changed because they proved unpopular), money has infiltrated the sport. India's Sachin Tendulkar, the world's top player, makes $25 million a year. Here, there are 29 established leagues, 500 clubs and 10,000 players in the country, according to the USA Cricket association, which intends to quadruple those numbers by 2006.

Beyond the trees, across College Circle, are the stately homes of President Thomas R. Tritton and veteran faculty. The homes, which are often hit by cricket balls, add splashes of mellow yellows, tans and shades of red, mostly brick red, like the John A. Lester Cricket Pavilion, which is trimmed in a rich dark green.

When Alexander arrives, it's 11:50 a.m. and 10 minutes until game time. Still, there's no sign of F&M.

"Cricket guys are relaxed," he explains. "It's no big deal if we don't start until 12:30 p.m."

Garrett McVaugh, a rare American-born teammate, is sitting in a folding metal chair. Likewise, he's urged to get a move on.

"I'm stretching my legs," McVaugh protests. "It takes a while, you know, to digest an omelet."

"I want to throw around a little," he says, joining the big circle that soon divides into two smaller ones. In it, bare-handed teammates throw the red leather-covered ball in odd, challenging ways to one another. Only the wicket keeper, or catcher, ever wears a glove.

A family of four passes, walking a dog. Judging by the way their necks are craned, they're awestruck by what they see, then more alarmed at the sight of the most popular sign on campus, "No dogs on athletic fields."

"This is so special," says Kamran Khan, who is in his 28th year as Haverford's cricket coach. "This is one of the best pitches in the country. Only cricket is played here -- exclusively -- and has been."

In his first season, he was still a student at Villanova. Khan, a native of Pakistan, made a living in restaurants and oriental carpets. Once a member of the Pakistani National Team, he was also playing captain of the U.S. National Team for a decade. At Haverford, he runs a fall and spring schedule.

"Haverford's role is tremendous because [American] cricket started here," he says. "Once we started playing, we continued to play."

"It's a club team, and finances dictate," says Haverford's Neil Kahrim, a junior by way of The Hill School in Pottstown, and Newark, N.J.

Another Haverford player, speaking anonymously, expresses annoyance at F&M's sartorial style.

"It pisses me off that they don't wear white," says the cricketer. "We have enough pride and dignity to wear white, even if they don't."

The only color in Haverford's all-whites is in the trim, which is school black and red, on the V-neck of the sweater and on the cuff of the sleeves. The sweater, which has the college's cricket logo in the center, is worn on top of a white collared shirt. There are no jersey numbers. Players wear long, white mesh pants.

Alexander, who prefers to do his own laundry so his "whites come out white," takes XXL pants. He has a hole, about mid-chest, in his sweater. For shoes, he has on Gray-Nicolls Century 500 model cricket cleats, size 11. The pair cost $50 or $60, and he's worn them since freshman year due to necessity, not luck.

A few F&M players are alumni. Even their coach plays. But no problem. There's no collegiate body, like the NCAA, to regulate how the sport is played on the college level. Later, Khan will also bat and bowl.

Haverford wins the coin toss and elects to bat first. Today's match is limited to 30 overs or 10 wickets, or outs, whichever comes first. An over is six balls, or pitches, meaning Haverford gets the first crack at scoring as many runs as it can with 180 pitches, all before making 10 outs. Each team will have one at-bat, or one inning.

By the time Alexander "pads up," or gets equipped for his at-bat, things haven't gone well. Normally potent team captain Arunabh Ghosh and McVaugh barely manage a run apiece. Alexander, the fifth up, straps on his right leg pad, then his left. He's also wearing lacrosse-like gloves and a helmet.

As a last measure, Alexander removes his sweater, leaving his black biceps to bulge from his white collared shirt.

"That means he's going to smash them," says teammate Ashwath Trasi, a sophomore who's keeping score.

Amid F&M's shouts of "good bowling" (or "good pitch"), Alexander defends the first two balls, then on his third ball against a new bowler, he produces a run with a hit down what would be the first-base foul line in baseball. Before an F&M defender catches a soft shot mid-waist, Alexander manages five runs, a woeful performance, albeit better than some of his teammates.

"This has been a bad day at the office," says Ghosh, the senior captain. "You've seen some good batters get out too easily. Garrett, Shawn and I usually average 30 runs each. Now, we have to spend the next four hours regretting it. The sport can be very unforgiving."

By the end of the at-bat, the Fords' 86 runs are a meager total; they average 120 or so. It will be a tough total to defend.

When F&M leaves the field, there's a short break before the Diplomats get their turn at-bat. There's no tea, as there's most certain to be at intermission during Philadelphia's International Festival matches. Alexander explains that two teams rarely have tea in the modern era. If anything, they use a cell phone to call in an order to the Ardmore WaWa, then an extra player picks up the halftime hoagies.

Proof? Store manager Chuck Roberts' business card hangs in the pavilion below aged, wooden placards of rosters featuring most, if not all, of Haverford College's teams, dating to the Civil War era.

Growing up in Carenage, a fishing village outside Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad, Shawn Alexander played soccer and was a beach bum. He played cricket in the streets with tennis balls.

"Our bats were handmade, and one guy would bat while everyone else bowled and tried to get him out," he says. "Basically, we broke a lot of windows, but where I grew up, we didn't have parks."

His community was close-knit. The streets were safe. His mother, Gloria, is Venezuela-born. His father, James, was born in Tobago, 30 miles from Trinidad. They separated in 1987. Alexander was 7 and it was the year Gloria moved to Philly, and the year she "took the trip," as he tells the story about how his mother left the family.

Alexander was 15 when she sent for him and sister Jakinar in 1995. At the time, Gloria, who is a private nurse's aide, lived in Strawberry Mansion, seven blocks from the high school. She moved to Olney in 1998.

It's a religious family; Alexander's older brother, Dexter, is a minister. He had his own church in Antigua until he enrolled as a student at Shippensburg University in 1999. He'll graduate in December with degrees in political science and economics. Jakinar has a psychology degree from Lock Haven.

The Alexanders are Pentecostal Christians, which leaves Alexander in a predicament most Sundays during cricket.

"It's hard in college," he says. "If I was home right now, I'd be attending service [at the New Testament Church of God in West Philly]. Every Sunday, I should be in church."

He made it to church Saturday for Jakinar's wedding, but James Alexander remained in Trinidad. While Alexander was growing up, his father was hardly ever home. He worked on oil tankers, and his transport routes kept him at sea. His family lived the life of the "average Trinidadian," or a "day-to-day existence," Alexander says.

Since coming to Philadelphia, Alexander's been home twice, once in the spring of 1998 and again last August. He's never really lived with his father. When Gloria left, Alexander lived with his two older sisters, Wendy and Liza, then with an aunt, grandmother, cousin and Jakinar until moving to Philadelphia.

"It was tough," he says about life without a father figure. "When I left, we didn't really know each other much. Now, when I go back as an adult, we can talk."

One day -- and years of student debt later -- Alexander says he'll have plenty to say, especially if he lives out his dream of becoming a medical research scientist who specializes in immunology. After his senior year at Strawberry Mansion, he spent that summer working at the Wistar Institute, quite a leap from his first two American summers working as a lifeguard for the city's parks and recreation department. The past three summers he worked in Dr. Punt's lab on campus, studying program cell death, or apoptosis.

"Some cells don't get the appropriate signal to die, so they live on," Alexander says. "That's why cancer cells multiply and become tumors."

The only tumor in his life, at present, is F&M's cricket club. Before going out as the opening bowler, or starting pitcher, he says he prefers bowling to batting. His long arms give him a distinct advantage.

"I feel like I'm in more control of the game," Alexander says. "I feel like I'm on the attack."

It doesn't take long to see why pitching is called bowling. He takes 16 tiny steps (every bowler's approach is different) toward a carpeted lane, bounces into a crow hop while pumping his left arm forward, then uncurls his right arm out of a windmill, delivering the ball over the top. He's known as a pace bowler, the equivalent of a fastball pitcher in baseball.

Although he's never been clocked, Ghosh estimates Alexander throws in the low- to mid-70s. A "spinner," or curve-ball pitcher, Ghosh, a native of New Delhi, India, varies grips and velocity in order to "fox the batter." He does not bowl against F&M, however -- he's forced out of the match when a well-hit ball strikes his left knee.

While making scoring runs look easy -- even off Alexander -- the guests are having fun, maybe too much fun: While asking the name of Haverford's newest bowler (freshman Anirudh Suri) for entry in the scorebook, a few Dips say, "Who?" When Suri's name is repeated, they continue mocking his first name, saying, "Oh, Anirudh, like Babe Ruth!"

Against rival Penn the previous weekend, Haverford lost 178-151. Today isn't much better. With almost half their overs (or outs) remaining, there's a cry that the score is "level," or even. Then a long fly is hit to Kahrim, who is filling in as a second vice-captain for Reid Sherman (studying abroad in Barbados), but he drops it. Haverford loses 87-86.

"That's cricket, really," a disgusted Khan says as he leaves the field. "You have good days and bad days."

Then he hosts a 15-minute private sit-in-a-circle meeting. In a little more than three hours, a cricket match that often takes six hours ends without tea, without WaWa and without a win for the home 11.

Shawn Alexander is holding the three stumps of the wicket, while talking with a coed who's come to watch the last hour or two.

Garrett McVaugh, who's now wearing a T-shirt that reads, "Go for the Nuts -- Black Squirrel Athletics," grabs a small grill, a bulk bag of charcoal and heads for the burgers. Minutes later, he's announcing, "Kamran, I don't think the refrigerator was on. The burgers smell like crap. I don't think we'll be grilling."

It may have been a bad day, but if you ask some of the cricketers he's played against, there will likely be many good ones for Alexander.

"I have played against Shawn for two years and he is perfectly built," says Raj Subramanyam, a 39-year-old pharmaceutical employee who plays for the British Officers Cricket Club in Philadelphia. "He’s tall, gangly and built like a bull. He has the uncanny quality of making the ball lift. He gets an extraordinary bounce, which is disconcerting for the batsman."

"Eight would be great, and the only reason I rate him a six right now is because he has only been playing for a short time," says Subramanyam. "To get eight, in terms of technique and fitness and stamina, he does not have to learn much. All he needs is exposure to the game, and to get a fair bit of strategy working in his mind. He needs to play in big matches like the cricket festival."

"I am trying to get Shawn under my wing with little tips here and there," he says. "I would like to see him play for the U.S. National Team. For that, more than technique or anything, he needs an injury-free body and a single-minded devotion to cricket. He is and has devotion."

Before Alexander heads for his dorm, he sits on the pavilion's steps and thinks out loud about his week ahead. Like others, he's busy with his senior thesis, and his goal remains to differentiate between immature and mature T-cells.

"We're trying to find a molecular explanation," he says. McVaugh jokes, "You realize he's making this all up."

"In science, things just don't always work out like you hope," he says. "There are a lot of disappointments."

"This is different," Alexander says. "Today, we know what we did wrong, and next time we can fix it, but in the lab, you do everything perfectly, and it should work out, but it still doesn't."

Far more important things have worked out for Shawn Alexander. After all, he'll graduate from Haverford College this month. So when you ask him the difference between his high-school years -- or even his early years in Trinidad -- and his college years at a prestigious Main Line institution of 1,100 students, he asks, "Where can I start?"

"It was a crazy school," he says about Strawberry Mansion. "My senior year, there was a riot. All I remember is a wall of students and a wall of cops, then a trash can went flying. That last year, a lot of kids ended up getting killed. Basically, there are a lot of dead people in my yearbook."

"At home [in Trinidad], an elder person could stop a fight simply because we respected our elders," Alexander continues. "But here, there's no respect for teachers or anyone."

"He's very rare," says Haverford's associate athletic director, John Douglas. "Haverford doesn't often get kids out of the Philadelphia Public School system. It's tough, but now he's tied to all the generations of Haverford cricket players, just like the sport ties us to the community in a great web of sports and culture."

"I never thought I'd be here playing cricket in the United States at a liberal arts college," he says. "Of course, I never looked deep into my future, although I always knew I wanted to be a scientist. Still, I never had a path. In Trinidad, no one ever asks if you're going to the university."

While he doesn't profess to have an altered social status, he knows his options have increased tenfold.

"This has opened my eyes to the world," Alexander says. "Haverford and cricket have allowed me to meet so many friends, and Kamran has always been so nice to me. Ever since the first day he gave me the ball to bowl."