They’ve been filing into a Hudson County, New Jersey, movie house for the past month, sometimes by the hundreds. They come in the dead of night or the crack of dawn, and park themselves for eight hours at a time. They skip appointments, burn vacation days and forage for meals at the candy counter.They’re addicted. Cricket is their poison, and the Cineplaza in North Bergen is just about the only public place in New Jersey to get their fix.The cricket world cup is being contested unknown to most baseball-centric Americans. Most of the 54 games are beamed to the screens of the Cineplaza and almost nowhere else in the state, save private homes with satellites.A sell-out crowd filled several theaters and spilled into the lobby for the India-Pakistan match; a turnout nearly as large was reported for the match against Sri Lanka match.The matches begin at 3 a.m. EST and last eight hours. These are serious fans.‘‘I’m crazy about the game’’, said Sujata Prakash, 42, of Guttenberg, who skipped work last Friday to watch the 7:30 a.m. India vs. Kenya match at the Cineplaza with her son. ‘‘If you’re Indian, you understand.’’Importing India’s national obsession was a natural for the Cineplaza, which caters to New Jersey’s Indian population — up to 169,180 in the 2000 census from 29,510 in 1980 — with a mix of Indian and American movies.Attendance has been quite good, said owner Gautam Shah, though he wishes other cricket-loving immigrants, like Europeans and Africans, would start showing up too.Shah had to hire extra security for the Pakistan-India game. Though Indians easily outnumbered Pakistanis, both sides cheered wildly, waved signs and chanted slogans like, ‘‘We win this match, we win Kashmir!’’‘‘Since war is not yet happening, people felt like that was the war’’, said Varma Kalidinda, a 31-year-old computer programmer.He has been in the United States for seven years, and tried his best to get into football and baseball. ‘‘But the enthusiasm is not there for me,” he said. “I’ve seen cricket a long time, and I feel like that’s the thing.”But the Kenya match drew just the die-hards, like Mohit Badlani, a software consultant whose boss let him take a sick day. ‘‘He knows the passion I feel’’, said Badlani, 26.It was the sixth game he had seen at the Cineplaza, just a short drive from his home on the Jersey City waterfront.Raaj Vakil, on the other hand, drove in from Stamford, Conn. When he can’t make the trip, he listens to running commentary on the Web. It’s the first time he’s been able to follow a World Cup this closely since he came to this country in 1987.“I’m hoping by watching and keeping up with them I can give some kind of a good omen,” said Vakil, 32.Cricket is somewhat like baseball, only longer in duration. Like America’s pastime, it features lengthy lulls and short bursts of furious action. Instead of a pitcher, there’s a bowler. Instead of a batter, there’s a batsman. The field is oval instead of a diamond. Home runs are worth six runs. There are only two bases. An out is called a wicket, and there are just 10 per match. Instead of nine innings there are 50 overs, and each has just six pitches, called balls.This much is clear — Indians are fanatical about the sport. Why was the sport such a good fit? Badlani has his theory.“This is the only thing that unites the whole country,” he said. “It’s so diverse, with different religions, different castes, different cultures. All are brought together in this game.”His roommate Manish Gupta, also a 26-year-old computer programmer, had a more mundane explanation. The pace suits Indians’ distinctively laid-back disposition, he said.“When the game starts it’s exciting, when the game is about to end it’s exciting, in the middle it’s probably a little easy-going,” he said.(The Star Ledger, Newark)
