By Audrey Moore

“What a shot, yaar!  SHABASH!”  The batting team roars with excitement, cheering on the teammate who just successfully smashed our taped tennis ball outside of Cromwell and into Brittingham Field.  Another six runs are added to the score.  Immediately, I check my camera and scroll through the photos to make sure I got a good shot of the small white ball whirling past the bleachers; content, I kneel back down in the dugout and poise myself for another set of cricketing clicks.  This is the focus of my life for the next six hours: it’s Friday Night Lights, and there’s no place I’d rather be.

In fact, this is my life every Friday night.  From 6:00pm until midnight, I trek from my nearby apartment to the Cromwell Track and Field Stadium to manage our Trojan Cricket Club’s Cromwell Premier League (CPL) tournament and photograph our players.  Now as the acting club President, it’s amazing to believe that just over a year ago I couldn’t even describe the rules of cricket, let alone partake in this fun, competitive pastime.

I owe that to USC.

Given that USC has the highest percentage of international students enrolled in the world, it’s no surprise that some of the first friends I met here came from countries far outside the U.S.  In my freshman year, the International Residential College toured me around Chinatown for the Mid-Autumn Festival, where I tried my first moon cake (red bean is definitely the best!) and ogled over traditional dragon dances.  My Kenyan choir friend taught me how to play the congas after a rehearsal session at the Caruso Catholic Center.  And the Indian graduate students who worked in our dining hall introduced me to cricket.

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