World Cup fever in baseball country

World Cup showdowns have been gaining in popularity in the US and the excitement has peaked for the current World Cup matches,Kulkarni,here to watch the ICC World Cup final in Mumbai,says.

He unveils quite a few surprises: baseball,a game the US cannot live without,is an offshoot of cricket,there are close to 2,00,000 active cricketers,700 cricket clubs and 45 leagues in the US,Kulkarni’s research for the documentary reveals.

Kulkarni told The Express,“The film captures how cricket in America finds its origins in the 1800s during the British rule and in fact gave birth to baseball. It also captures the craze amongst different communities in America coming together to play the sport and watch each match of the World Cup.”

Kulkarni,settled in the US a decade back,says his documentary gives a ringside view of the deep-rooted history of cricket in America and brings out the considerable popularity World Cup matches enjoy in the US.

The Pitch of Dreams was completed in December 2010 and was released in major film festivals including The All Sports Film Festival in Los Angeles and The Mahindra Indo-American Film Festival in New York. “It received a good response. Many Americans enquired about rules of the game and had a lot of questions,” he said.

An alumnus of Garware and Fergusson College,Kulkarni shifted to America after graduation for his MA in Mass Communication and Media Arts from Southern Illinois University,Carbondale,where he began a career in filmmaking. In 2007,he bought his camera equipment and used his weekends,his time away from his job at Voice of America,to travel around the country on his own expense to research and shoot his documentary.

He traveled from his home in Seattle to the only ICC approved Cricket Stadium in Fort Lauderdale,Florida,to the cricket library in Philadelphia to California. After close to two years of hard work,Kulkarni realised that cricket,although not talked about too highly,was played and followed in the majority of the US cities. “There are 700 cricket clubs in 45 leagues around the country and more than 45 lakh cricket fans and close to 2,00,000 active cricketers playing in the country,” he says.

The excitement hit the roof in the 2011 World Cup. “I had captured scenes of the 2007 World Cup and the early stages of the 2011 World Cup,the atmosphere was electric this time. People would wake up at odd hours,gather in universities,shell out money for a dish connection or watch the match on laptops,” he said. Kulkarni will add World Cup shots to his film.