Saturday or Sunday mornings at 8:30 AM through the season, at Thomas P. Quinn Park in Mason. Hard tennis ball, 10 and 20 overs, and everybody plays — however you hold the bat.
Somewhere between the second and third summer here, most of us work out that the hardest part of moving is not the paperwork. It is the empty weekend mornings. Cinty Bangla Tigers started because a few of us missed the game, and it turned into the most reliable way this community sees each other outside a hall.
###Where and when We play at Thomas P. Quinn Park, 880 Tradewind Drive, Mason, OH 45040. It is a 10-acre neighbourhood park with a cricket pitch, open dawn to dusk.
Every Saturday or Sunday morning through the season, usually starting at 8:30 AM. Which of the two days is settled during the week in the group chat — it moves around the weather and who is available. If you are coming for the first time, ask in the group on the Thursday or Friday and somebody will tell you exactly where to stand.
###What the cricket actually looks like Hard tennis ball. Not a leather ball. It means no pads, no helmet, no kit bag — and nobody goes home injured. 10 overs or 20 overs, depending on how many turn up and how much daylight is left. We play other communities too — Nepali and Indian sides among them. Those matches are the friendliest fixtures of the summer, and a decent share of the post-match conversation has nothing to do with cricket.
###You do not need to be good This is the part people do not believe until they turn up.
If you bowled league cricket back home, you will get an over and somebody will try to hit you out of the park. If you have never held a bat, somebody will show you the grip, and you will get a bat anyway. Both of those happen on the same morning, most weeks.
Nobody is keeping a record of your average. What we are actually short of, most weekends, is people — not talent.
###Family cricket days A few times a season we run Family Cricket Day: whole families come, the match slows down, and children who have only seen cricket on a phone get a bat in their hands. Parents who have not run in fifteen years discover this fact at speed.
These are the ones to bring people to. If a friend has been meaning to come and keeps not coming, bring them to a family day.
###Why we keep doing it The physical part is obvious — two hours outdoors, running, before the day has even started, in a country where most of us spend the week at a desk.
The rest matters more. An hour of cricket does something for your head that a walk does not: you are concentrating on something small and immediate, with people, outdoors, and the week goes quiet for a while. For anybody new to Cincinnati and finding it lonely — and it is lonely, for most people, for longer than they admit — a standing weekend fixture where people expect you is worth more than it sounds.
That is the actual reason the team exists. The cricket is the excuse.
###How to join There is a Facebook Messenger group where everything is arranged — which day, what time, who is bringing the stumps, who needs a lift. That is where it all happens.
To get added, ask in the Cinty Bangla Facebook group, or send the admins a message and we will add you.
What to bring: trainers you can run in and water. An 8:30 start keeps us ahead of the worst of the heat, but July and August still bite by mid-morning, so bring a cap. Bats, balls and stumps are already there.
Come for one Sunday morning. That is genuinely all we ask.