Giants fans Mike Tarloff and wife Lisa made the trip from New York to Indianapolis the day before the game hoping they would find resale tickets they could afford.  They found two online for $1,700 apiece and said it was worth it.

He said, “It’s unbelievably outstanding.  You know the team has been magical all season. You know I said to my wife there is 3:50 to go or thereabouts, and you know we need a Super Bowl winning drive and the team’s coming through.  Eli has led them many times.  And, the team came through and it was awesome.”

His wife Lisa told VOA how much witnessing her Giants win the Super Bowl meant to her.  “Absolutely amazing.  I tell my husband seeing the Hollywood sign in California was the thrill of my life, but now next to marrying him, this is the next best moment.”

For losing quarterback Tom Brady, who has won three Super Bowls in his career and had guided New England to an impressive 13-3 regular season, it was a huge disappointment.

Brady said, “You know we just came up a little bit short and I think there were some missed opportunities out there.  Everybody feels we could have done more.  I’ll keep coming to this game and keep trying.  I’d rather come to lose than not get here, so hopefully we’ll be back at some point.  We had a great year.  We just didn’t make enough plays today.”

So, the New York Giants are back on top of the American football world, claiming Super Bowl 46, 21-17.

Some information for this report provided by Reuters, AFP, AP.

Last year, overnight temperatures plummeted to minus 31 degress Celsius. The year before, minus 37. That year, cyclist Jason Buffington saw one of his friends - a fellow racer - who'd stopped.<!--IMAGE-LEFT-->
"I came up on Charlie in the last 20 miles of the trail standing and waving his legs back and forth trying to get circulation back in his toes," Buffington says.

Charlie Farrow, 52,  kept going, crossing the finish line about two hours later. Buffington, a doctor from Duluth, Minnesota, and 10 years younger than Farrow, was there to meet him, and quickly helped him remove his boots.

"His toes were swollen and purple like a plum," Buffington remembers. "He lost probably about half of the skin off his big toe about two or three months later."

"My toenail never came back," Farrow adds, "so I'm a man without a toenail."

Nevertheless, both men were still at the starting line for this year’s event. Farrow's bike was outfitted with snow tires as wide as his fist. After biking the past two years, Buffington raced on foot this time. He rigged up a sled to pull behind him, loaded with more than 11 kilos worth of survival gear every racer is required to carry for the extreme cold.<!--IMAGE-LEFT-->
"You get what's called the kennel cough," Buffington says. "Where your lungs get frozen, your eyeballs, your corneas get a little frostbite, and everyone kind of walks around, and everything's real foggy, and you just have this dry coughing going the whole time."

Then there's the lack of sleep. The walkers and skiers take almost two days to complete the course, and may only sleep a couple of hours. The fastest bikers take nearly 20 hours, and don't rest at all.

This was Farrow’s seventh Arrowhead. He’s done all of them except the very first race. The high school social studies teacher says every time he does the race, his fatigued mind starts playing sinister tricks.

"I have a recurring hallucination regarding the Wizard of Oz. I always have this vision of the trees coming after me... and then I also have this vision of the Emerald City... but I can't ever get to it," he says.

Isolation is also a factor. As the course meanders from International Falls, on the Canadian border, through a national forest and around and over some of Minnesota’s 10,000 now-frozen lakes, the racers are spread out far apart.

"That's definitely the biggest danger," Buffington says. "Both years that I've biked it, even though it's taken less than 20 hours, there are times where for six-and-a-half hours, in the middle of the night, 20 below, you don't see a soul, and if anything happens, you're out there on your own."

That means racers have to be extremely prepared and careful. Three aid stations and nine shelters are spaced along the route.

Jeremy Kershaw, 40, a cardiac nurse, has completed the race for the past three years; first by ski, then bike, and last year on foot. With about 32 kilometers to go, he caught up to a racer struggling on the side of the trail.

"He was kind of frantically trying to get new clothes on and eat," Kershaw says. "It was a scary situation because I was really at the last several hours of the race, and so I was really at the end of my reserves."

Luckily, the racer had a cell phone, so Kershaw was able to get hold of a support crew which hauled the racer to safety by snowmobile.

Kershaw says it was a good reminder of how things can go wrong. "If you're not paying attention, things can go south very quickly, particularly when it's that cold and you're that tired."

Every year, about half the racers in the Arrowhead 135 drop out before reaching the finish line.

And that's partly what attracts athletes like Kershaw. "I'm more drawn to it by the fact that there's so much carnage, that people don't finish, that it's so tough."

There wasn’t as much carnage this year. The temperature at the start was a relatively balmy minus twelve degrees Celsius. And racers benefitted from the conditions. Minnesotan Casey Krueger smashed the ski record by 14 hours, finishing in just over 22 hours.

The first woman biker across the finish line - Eszter Horanyi from Colorado - took a bit over 18 hours to break the women’s record by two hours, just two-and-a-half hours behind the winning biker.

And Jason Buffington, the doctor from Duluth, set a new course record for runners. He finished in just over 37 hours.

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In Japan, Nippon Television will show a tape delay of the game shortly after midnight on Monday.  Ikuma Isaac is a reporter for NTV, which is a licensed partner of the NFL and has a crew of 26 here in Indianapolis.  He covers the National Football League throughout the season for a popular weekly one-hour show called "NFL Club" that is watched by 30 million people.

Isaac says his station uses the Katakana language for foreign names and football terms, like this:

“Let’s say it’s ((Japanese)), first and 10, ((Japanese)), [New York Giants Quarterback] Peyton Manning, he’s dropping back, ((Japanese)), he got the pass through, ((Japanese)), or end zone is, you know, 'endozone,' touchdown is 'touchadown.'  So I don’t know if you’d be learning any Japanese.  But if a Westerner or if an English speaker actually listened to a Japanese broadcast of football, they would probably get what is going on,” Isaac said.

Isaac says that because many viewers are learning the game of American football, the play-by-play announcers on NTV’s main network make sure they explain the rules.

Florian Bauer of Germany’s SAT.1 television says soccer, of course, is the popular sport in his country.  But he says he loves American football and that in his broadcasts he tries to educate others about his passion.

“I think the Super Bowl is prestige, and it’s one of the greatest events -- even if it’s not the greatest event -- in the whole world.  And I think we have to be very proud to broadcast it,” Bauer said.

The NFL’s David Tossell says that virtually no matter where you are in the world, you should be able to find Sunday's Super Bowl telecast.

The supporters’ group was founded by Australian-born Indians, who have mixed their enthusiasm for sport with an appreciation of music from Bollywood, the Indian movie industry that is based in Mumbai.

India’s Swami Army has commandeered part of the Sydney Cricket Ground, festooning its section with flags and banners. The noise of hundreds of Indian fans reverberates around this famous old stadium, which is celebrating its 100th Test match.

Although they may lack the numbers of England's Barmy Army, the Indian contingent is no less passionate.

"The Swami Army was set up about eight years ago by a group of friends in Melbourne and Sydney," Sumit Grover, one of the group’s founding members, said. "We used to travel around to watch the games and from there we formalized the Swami Army this year to make it a big Indian cricket supporter group."

Indian supporters have worked with Australian cricket authorities to allow members of the Swami Army to sit together at matches. Their aim is to follow their team through the good times and bad.

Amit Grover, another of the group’s founders, says it has members in several countries. "The Swami Army has gone global.  We have regiments set up in the U.K., U.S., Singapore, UAE, so this isn’t just an Australian phenomena," he stated. "It is going to be worldwide and global."

Indian batting legend Sachin Tendulkar is chasing a milestone on this tour of Australia; the 100th time he has scored 100 runs in an international match, a feat never achieved before.  So far his team has struggled, losing the First Test in Melbourne and was skittled out for just 191 in its first innings here in Sydney.

Still the fans are keeping the faith. “Cricket is a religion in India, you know," one fan said. "Like, you don’t stop supporting your religion when things get tough.  You know, things get tough on the field and we just get louder and prouder.  So we absolutely love our cricket and we’ll never stop loving it."

Swami is a Sanskrit word that means teacher or guru.  Members of the Swami Army say they are committed to bringing a bit of Bollywood glamour to the world of international cricket.

Cricket is popular in both India and Australia, which are former colonies of Britain, where the game developed.  Test matches are played over five days.  Each side has eleven players and bats twice, although shorter forms of the sport are well-liked by supporters.

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Sports lovers follow their teams intensely, and dream of meeting their favorite players. For most it remains only a dream. But Iranian American Arash Markazi, 31, has fulfilled his dream, working as a sports writer for the prestigious sports television network, ESPN.

"I love writing. I always loved to write. And when I was younger I loved to play sports too and then obviously at a certain point of time I realized I wasn't going to be much taller than 5'6" (1.7 meters). And then I realized I wasn't going to play sports, I could write about sports," said Markazi.

But the road has been bumpy for Markazi. More than 10 years ago, while working for his college newspaper, he was given the worst news possible.

"I had done a story about a basketball player that had Hodgkin's. I didn't even know what it was. I had to do research. The parents were crying and I said, 'this is exactly why I got into sports journalism so I wouldn't have to cover stories like this.' I didn't want to talk about kids getting cancer or anything like that. And then lo and behold, like a year later I get the same kind of cancer," Markazi recalled.

Cancer did not deter him. After a strong recovery, Markazi landed his dream job with Sports Illustrated magazine in New York City. Then, his cancer came back. He spent his recovery time making plans.

"When I was in the hospital I made a list of the games I wanted to go to and the events that I wanted to cover because I couldn't just think about my current situation," Markazi added.

And he did just that. Now, he has checked off all the events on his list. When he is not traveling the world, he covers the local teams in Los Angeles. But at this point in his career and after recovering from cancer twice, he looks at his job from a different perspective.

"I remember when I was younger I would cry when my team lost. But now, it really doesn't matter to me who wins the game. I just want a good story. When I'm at a game I'm rooting for the guy who never played to get in the game and to write about him," Markazi explained.

As much as Markazi enjoys his job and the friends he has made, cancer has put things in perspective for him. After two grueling recoveries, he says he lives with a constant reminder of how precious life is.

"It made me appreciate life a lot more. I think the one thing when people meet me, they say 'You are really happy. Why are you always so happy?' And I say, 'Because I woke up this morning. And I'm living and I'm breathing and I'm talking to you right now.' It's odd for someone in their 20s to be happy because they woke up in the morning and they're alive," Markazi said.

Being courageous enough to pursue a passion, strong enough to fight cancer twice, and just happy about breathing may be odd for a man so young. But Arash Markazi's humble outlook on life and contagious smile are exactly what has helped him overcome life's challenges.

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The commitment to this lengthy event means none of the sailors will likely vie for gold at next year’s London Olympics.

The crew of the Spanish yacht Telefonica features three past Olympic gold medalists. One is Iker Martinez, who skippered Telefonica to victory in the first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race from Alicante, Spain to Cape Town, South Africa.

"We’re happy, that’s something very special for us," he said. "We tried already in the last two editions [of the race] and it didn’t happen as we wanted, but we learned a lot every time.  So this is very important for the team. We’re now very happy."

The opening leg took boats west toward the island of Fernando De Noronha off Brazil's coast before heading south across the Atlantic to Cape Town.

In second place after that first leg is Camper. Sponsored by the Spanish footwear brand, it's crewed mostly by New Zealanders. The lone South African member, Mike Pammenter, smashed his face when he was washed down the deck by high seas.

Puma was in the lead at one point in the race, but lost its mast and fell to fifth.

“Nobody’s hurt, nobody was even close to hurt, and then some clear heroics from the crew," said Puma's American skipper Ken Read. "We’ll live to fight another day, I promise you that."

And there are many days yet to come during passage to eight more ports of call. Future stops include The United Arab Emirates, China, New Zealand, Brazil, the United States, Portugal and France, with the race finishing in Galway, Ireland, in early July.

In-port races are being staged at each stop, the closest spectators can get to the action without actually being aboard one of the boats. The second leg of the Volvo Ocean Race is expected to take three weeks, with the sailors aiming to arrive in Abu Dhabi on January 1 of the New Year.

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It may not be a professional sport, but these players are no amateurs. The “Texecutioners” from Austin, Texas took home the bronze at the national championship in Denver.

During a warm-up before the winning game, player "Molotov M. Pale" from the "Texecutioners" explained why she was drawn to the sport.

"It was a lot of really smart, creative women with all this buzzy energy to be almost revolutionary. I mean it was people wanting to change things and restructure things and very DIY and do it yourself and I wanted to capture that energy, that incendiary energy that lights things up," she said.

In roller derby, two teams have five players each who race in the same direction around a track.

Each team’s fastest player, called a “jammer,” aims to skate past opposing team members called “blockers.” When the “jammer” passes a “blocker” she earns a point.

It often ends in bruises. The players, many wearing hot pants, are up to it.

Molotov M. Pale says when roller derby re-emerged around ten years ago it had a lot of personality.

"There was a lot of individuality and style, and people created these amazing personas. And that’s still very present, and you see that everywhere, but it has also taken a shift toward a more mainstream sport and less of a sub-cultural sport," she said.

The sport is becoming more mainstream. Today, more than 1,000 leagues from around the world play roller derby, and a team can be found in just about every corner of the United States.

Suzy Hotrod is one of the star players of the New York team, the “Gotham Girls”, winners of the national competition.

She says today athleticism is key to roller derby.

"Roller Derby is an amazing thing for women," she said. "It’s super about strength and female empowerment and being confident, being an athlete. This is where everyone can come and still play sports and feel the community and be athletic and it’s really changed my life."

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

Some information for this report provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.

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In the city of St. Louis, Missouri, Cardinals baseball is king.  The team generates money and attention for the city, and attracts a loyal fan base, including supporters like Beth Nelson.

Nelson, an account clerk at St. Louis City Hall, and her husband, also a city employee, saw a drop in their pay over the last two years, the effects of mandatory unpaid days off to help the city balance its budget.

The furloughs Saint Louis Mayor Francis Slay instituted two years ago affected all city employees, including him.
"When you have a big budget crunch, unfortunately it really does impact the employees," said Slay.

Slay was preparing for more furloughs when the Cardinals made a comeback in the final weeks of the regular season.  They made the playoffs and hosted some of the post-season games, which brought more money to St. Louis from ticket and concession sales taxes.

"With one World Series game, we get - conservatively - about $500,000 in extra revenues directly into the city," noted Slay.

More people spending money in the city to watch the post-season games also helps souvenir vendors like Mike Burch.

"The regular season wasn't all that good, but for all of us down here downtown with the hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops, it's really been a boost for us… much needed," said Burch.

It was also a boost for Beth Nelson and her husband.  Thanks to the Cardinals post season run, Mayor Slay won't be furloughing city employees.

"Everybody that you talk to that works for the city of Saint Louis knows that its directly because of the Cardinals going on the post season is why we don't have to have furloughs this year," said Nelson.

"They are definitely saving jobs in the city of Saint Louis and they're certainly helping families under tough economic times," explained Slay.

Slay says furloughs could return if the economy does not improve, but Beth Nelson is hopeful.

"Maybe the Cardinals will go on the World Series next year, too," said Nelson.

The Cardinals reached the post season seven times since Slay assumed office in 2001.  He's hoping the Cardinals make an eighth run at the title in 2012.

An Olympic hopeful faces a small obstacle

Seventeen-year-old Zeinab Hammoud has a brown belt in Taekwondo, and dreams of one day making it to the Olympics.  But unlike her sister, Rana, Zeinab chooses to wear the Islamic headscarf, or hijab.  

This became a problem four years ago. The team’s hard work, passion and hopes were dashed when the Taekwondo Federation of Quebec expelled them from a tournament in 2007. The reason: their hijabs were considered unsafe. “I was really disappointed because I trained really hard for that tournament. When I found out we were expelled I lost all my motivation to continue,” Hammoud said.

Civil rights supporters and sports enthusiasts around the world were enraged. Elham Seyed Javad was one of them. “In my opinion every individual, no matter their religion, should have the same rights as anyone else in society," he stated. "I mean, sports was made to re-unite people."

Athletic fashion

Javad was an industrial design student at the time, so she decided to take on the problem as one of her school projects. "At the time, in 2008, when I decided to take on this project, the international federation of Taekwondo didn’t allow its athletes to wear anything under the helmet. So my professor didn’t think there was a point of pursuing it.  But my point was, the rule is there because nothing has been invented that is appropriate," she explained.

Javad spent countless hours with the Hammoud sisters’ taekwondo team and with pattern maker Latifa Boukenda, to make the best product possible. “This was a very exciting project for me. I’ve worked in fashion for many years but this was special because it was beyond fashion," she said. "It had a more human and social aspect to it. helping young women blossom and follow their athletic dreams."

Ultimately, they hit upon a design that worked, and a fabric that was stretchy, breathable, and dried quickly.  Called a “ResportOn,” the garment was an immediate hit.

Even Zeinab’s sister Rana, who chooses not to wear the hijab, was impressed. “I just tried the Resport hijab and the hair was inside so it doesn’t come out and it’s very comfortable so you can play without trying to put your hair inside all the time,” she noted.

Rules reconsidered, changed

Javad’s invention came at an opportune time.  A year later, in response to pressure from the taekwondo community, the World Taekwondo Federation changed its rules to allow for head-coverings.

The Montreal Muslim Taekwondo team was able to compete again.

“I was in the stands and got teary-eyed because since the very beginning my goal was to be able to see the girls on the mats again. When it happened it was like someone gave me the world," Javad stated.

Javad thought she was just helping Zeinab and her teammates.  But when an investor approached her about marketing the product, things changed dramatically.  In January, her sports hijab became available to athletes all over the world.  She has been busy ever since. “My days start at 2am when my phone goes off with an email from an athlete from the other side of the world. I turn it on and read the email, get happy and go back to sleep," she said.

While there are other sports hijabs on the market, Javad believes hers has some advantages.  Those include a built-in t-shirt that keeps it from pulling loose, and an opening at the back that allows easy access for wearers to adjust their hair.

Djokovic’s image adorns buildings in Belgrade. His every match is watched avidly in sidewalk cafes. It was not an easy route to become number one in the world.

Just as Djokovic was discovering his talent for tennis in the early 1990's, Yugoslavia began its bloody breakup. His teenage training years took place against the backdrop of the Kosovo conflict and NATO bombing raids on Belgrade.

Coach Gencic describes how she dodged the bombs to keep Djokovic playing tennis.

“I listened to the radio. ‘There’s a bomb here in Banitsa.’  OK, next day, we shall play here.  ‘No!  Why here?’ Because tomorrow the bombs will hit another side of the city," she said. "That’s what happened. When I listened in the morning to where the bombs were, so we would go in that part of Belgrade to practice tennis.”

As Djokovic’s triumphs put Serbian tennis on the map, the country has been in the spotlight for very different reasons.

The arrest in May of former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Maldic and in July of former Croatian Serb general Goran Hadzic have been painful reminders of the country’s brutal past. Both are accused of committing war crimes during the Balkans conflict.

Ljiljiana Smajlovic is president of the Serbian Journalists’ Association. She said there is anger at the way Serbia is simplified in the world’s media.

“In the sense that Djokovic is someone that we look up to and we’re happy that the world sees us in a better context than it has in the past, and at the same time there is resentment... Mostly when people think of Serb war crimes, I think it’s in terms of the resentment that they are played up so much in the West and it’s not in terms of, ‘God, are we going to face up to our past?’” said Smajlovic.

The arrests of Mladic and Hadzic were meant to boost Serbia’s hopes of joining the European Union. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned Belgrade, however, that it needs to make progress in talks with Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

Smaljovic said Serbs are growing tired of EU demands.

“I see some trouble ahead in this lack of hope almost. This feeling that we’re being told there’s no alternative all the time. Hearing that there’s no alternative is not something that makes your heart grow fond," she said. "Because transition has been, for the most part, that you lose your job and then you never find a job as good as that one.”

Belgrade does not seem like a city stuck in its past. The annual beer festival is just one of many events to have emerged in the last decade that attract visitors from across the globe.

But the lack of interest among young people in Serbia’s recent history concerns Miljenko Dereta, director of the non-governmental organization, Civic Initiatives.

“We had a survey recently because we have a youth program, and we were shocked by the lack of information they have," said Dereta.  "They didn’t know there was a war in Bosnia, incredibly. They didn’t understand why the Hague tribunal is judging only the people from this region because they didn’t have the basic information it was formed for this region.”

Back at the tennis club on the outskirts of Belgrade, Gencic is mentoring the next generation of Serbian stars.

At 12 years old, they were only just born when the NATO bombs were falling on Belgrade. They have one aim - to emulate their hero.

“Novak Djokovic,” said one young player when asked which player inspires.

“Novak Djokovic,” replied another.

Like millions of people across Serbia, they will be following every step of Djokovic’s attempts to win his first U.S. Open title. He is the one person, it seems, who unites this country - the new face of Serbia.

The purpose of the exhibition basketball match was to foster goodwill.  Instead, online videos of the game showed an all-out brawl between the two teams - the Georgetown Hoyas and the Bayi Rockets.

Amateur video footage showed a bench clearing melee in the fourth quarter with the score tied. Players from both teams punched and kicked each other. The game was then called off. As the Georgetown team walked off the court, video showed spectators booing and a few throwing cups at the players.

Brook Larmer wrote a book on China’s best known basketball player, called “Operation Yao Ming.”  He was not at the contentious match, but saw video afterwards.

“I don’t want to get too involved in a partisan fight or discussion, but I think the Chinese team was unbelievably quick to jump off the bench," he said. "The precipitating incident was an elbow, an elbow from one of the Georgetown guards.  You have to take into account that this happened after lots and lots of pushing and shoving, and name calling, and trash talking, and even a Chinese player getting in the face of the American coach."

Georgetown is a University team from Washington D.C. The Bayi Rockets of Shanghai play in the Chinese Basketball Association, China’s top professional league.

Larmer notes that the Bayi Rockets is the People’s Liberation Army’s team and used to be the centerpiece of the Chinese government’s state-run sports system.

“Basketball was one of their [PLA’s] last [sports] strongholds and they’ve faded from the limelight, and now they’re just a middling team that has a reputation for being a little overly pugnacious,” Larmer explained.

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Thursday night’s brawl took place at the same time visiting Vice President Joe Biden was across town banqueting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, who is expected to become China’s next president.  The two countries have been working hard to present the relationship as a very good one.

Larmer points to the chaos as a wasted opportunity to build better ties through sport - in which basketball diplomacy could have replaced ping pong diplomacy.

“You don’t want to say that it’s a metaphor for U.S.-China relations, because it certainly isn’t, but it does bespeak some of the tensions underlying these games that are supposed to be just friendly,” he added.

Larmer says he is concerned by what he describes as “a disturbing trend” of more violence in Chinese basketball games - both within the national league and supposedly friendly matches with players from other countries.

Chinese players fought even more violently last year, in a goodwill match against a team from Brazil.  Following the dust-up with the Brazilian team, some of the Chinese team’s coaches were fined and the players sent to sportsmanship classes, but, as Larmer notes, no player was suspended.

Only they weren’t playing football, basketball or track and field. They were playing cricket, a sport which was last popular in the U.S. more than 150 years ago, but is seeing a dramatic resurgence as immigrant groups, particularly from India and Pakistan, grow.

This particular match was between Ashford Cricket Club (ACC) and the Willow Cricket Club, two teams out of 32 that comprise the Washington Metro Cricket League (WMCL), one of several leagues in the DC area and one of 45 leagues nationwide officially recognized by the USA Cricket Association (USACA).

“There’s not enough room for all the people who want to play,” said Hitesh Panchal, the captain of ACC and one of the founders of the WMCL. “There are just not enough places to play.”

The players in the WMCL are largely from the Indian subcontinent. Some are U.S. residents, some citizens and some here on temporary H1B employment visas. Many work in the computer field, said Panchal. They’re of all ages, some are married and others are bachelors, but they all share a deep love of the sport.

Growth Potential

According to John L. Aaron, the Executive Secretary of USACA, there are 20,000 league players in the U.S. and likely 200,000 recreational players.

He thinks cricket has huge growth potential as well, saying there are millions of people living in the U.S. from countries where cricket is popular, namely India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the West Indies.

“It’s growing in two important areas,” Aaron said. “You are seeing people from countries where cricket is not played starting to play, and more importantly, it’s being handed down to the children of immigrants from countries where cricket is played.”

While there are no cricket version of Little League yet, Aaron didn’t rule out the possibility.

Aaron said that during the 2007 Cricket World Cup, which was held in the West Indies, more people in the U.S. watched than in any country other than India, where cricket is a religion unto itself.

Despite the increase in popularity, the United States is a long way from competing at a world-class level with countries such as India, England, Bangladesh, Australia, Pakistan, the West Indies, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and South Africa, the full members of the International Cricket Council (ICC) that vie for the World Cup every four years.

The U.S., for now at least, remains a second-tier, associate member of the ICC. However, with the recent growth in popularity, some of the world’s top teams have started coming to the U.S. to play exhibition matches.

For example, in May of 2010, the New Zealand and Sri Lankan teams played two, one-day matches at the only ICC-sanctioned cricket stadium in the U.S., which is located at the Central Broward Regional Park in Florida.

“There was good attendance,” said Aaron. “There were quite a few Americans who were not familiar with the sport, and they were asking a ton of questions.”

Serious Competition

While there were no spectators at the WMCL match, the league is serious enough to have come up with $10,000 to invest in the pitch, a specially prepared turf strip in the middle of the field where most of the action takes place. The league also maintains a very thorough website, complete with team and individual statistics as well as player profiles.

WMCL matches aren’t played with a regular cricket ball, but instead with a modified tennis ball. Panchal said this was to avoid potential liability as well as to make the game playable without the protective gear required when using the very hard, leather ball. Some leagues do play with a regulation ball, Panchal said.

The WMCL matches are highly competitive and taken very seriously by the players. As in baseball, when one team is batting, the other takes to the WMCL version of a baseball dugout, in this case, a couple of picnic tables in the shade by the field. From there, they shout encouragement to their batsmen. On the field, there’s more than a little trash talk, said Panchal.

Players are also not afraid to verbally clash when they feel a call doesn’t go their way.

Two controversial calls by the umpires cleared the benches, and while it never got close to trading blows, heated words were exchanged.

Cricket is not taken lightly.

“It’s fun, competitive and also a good workout,” said Ganesh Gopal, whose DC Yorkers team took to the field in the next match. “Why else would I spend almost five hours on a weekend for the game?”

In the end the Willow Cricket Club edged out ACC 143/8 (Overs: 20.0) to 102/10 (Overs: 16.5). ACC was closing the gap, but one of their batsman was called out on a controversial play. Panchal, like any competitor, blamed the loss at least partially on the poor quality of the umpire.

Some information for this report was provided by AP.

That's because although American-style football ranks among the top favorites in the United States, it has virtually no following in India.

That fact has not deterred a group of foreign investors from launching the Elite Football League of India, or EFLI.

Eight teams representing India’s largest cities will kick off the EFLI’s inaugural season next November in the western city of Pune. The organizers say there is huge potential in a country of 1.2 billion people.  

Sports analysts in India are not so sure.

Football commentator Novy Kapadia in New Delhi sees the launch of American-style football in India as an attempt at globalizing the sport. But he says it remains to be seen whether the rough and tumble sport will excite Indians, for whom it is “an area of darkness.”   

“This is really a surprise, a bolt from the blue," Kapadia says. "There has never been attraction towards American football, neither is American football watched a lot on television. Also, genetically and physically it is a game for much stronger people and does not really suit the Indian physique.”

The EFLI will have to begin from scratch, training both players and coaches. But it has big plans. It will add new teams in each season for 10 years, or until it has 52 teams representing all Indian cities with a population of over one million.

The organizers say they are confident of finding a niche population that will be interested in a sport that is part of the American way of life.

Sports commentator Kapadia says American-style football is entering India at a time when other sports enterprises, such as Formula One auto racing, are also eyeing the country’s huge middle class.   

“The world is seeing India as a market, and I think the sporting world has caught on a bit late," he says. "But they’ve seen that even a 200 million middle class is larger than most countries in Europe. This consumer middle class, which is increasingly getting globalized, exposed to satellite television, English speaking, who like to be associated with global brands, just the same reason Formula One is coming into India, is probably the reason why American football is coming.”

American Football will have to compete with cricket, the sport that has a nationwide following. Cricket’s Indian Premier League, which launched in 2008, has been a spectacular success and has turned into a multi-million dollar business.

Investors in EFLI include the former coach of the Chicago Bears, Mike Ditka, former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski and former Green Bay Packers linebacker Brandon Chillar.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

For several weeks last month, the Flying Tigers hosted a summer camp for these young players. Most were from Beijing, but some came from as far away as Hong Kong and the northeastern province of Heilongjiang.

“Initially coming to China where hockey isn't their main focus, I was very impressed with the skill level of the kids right from the 04-05s, right up to the big kids," said Kevin Masters, one of several coaches flown in from Canada. "The specifics of the skating and the individual type skills are absolutely comparable to what we see back home in Canada.”

Supportive parents

And where there is ice hockey - a sport that requires a lot of time and money - there are always ice hockey parents cheering their kids on and giving pointers.

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“When my son started playing ice hockey, we had just seen the movie Transformers and he thought goalies look like Transformers with all of their pads on and because of that it was his favorite position,” said Zhou Jianwei, whose eight-year-old son is a goalie.

Zhou says that in China, where many families have only one child, his son is learning more than just a sport.

“Many kids [in China] lack a sense of teamwork and what it means to work hard for what they want to get because their parents have taken care of everything for them. But since he's started playing ice hockey, he's slowly begun to understand how to work together with his teammates to accomplish a goal and gained a sense of how [in society] people need to help one another to get things done,” Zhou said.

China's colder northeast provinces are largely considered the home of ice hockey in the country. And, a large majority of the players on China's national ice hockey team grew up there.

New ice rinks

Now, with new rinks in Beijing, that is starting to change. Local hockey organizers note that the number of U16 or 16 year-old ice hockey players in Beijing is likely to surpass the number of players in the northeast in the next season or two.

The reasons, they say, are because more families in Beijing can afford ice hockey, which is an expensive sport, and because the northeast is opening up to other sports, which is taking players away from the ice.

Cao Zhennan says her father played hockey while growing up in the northeast and helped to get her son interested.  She says the lessons her son learns from ice hockey far outweigh any future prospect of making the national team or playing more competitively.

“Ice hockey is a fast and physical sport, it's a really a fun sport," Cao said. "On top of that, he's a boy and we got into the sport hoping it would help him become more courageous. It (ice hockey) also gets more interesting as the kids learn how to work together and make a lot of new friends.”

Charlie, an 11-year-old, who plays right wing, says his friend Abiyasi got him interested in the sport a year-and-a-half ago. Charlie says the sport has other benefits besides keeping him away from computer games.

“I think it's fun. It's good for my health and it's not boring!” Charlie said.

More teams

Mark Simon, vice president and head coach of the Beijing Imperial Guard Hockey Club, one of several teams in the Beijing Junior Hockey League, says team rosters have been growing in recent years.

“A group of us, our club and a few others started a league in 2008 and 2009 with four teams, which included about 50-60 players," Simon said. "Now, last season in 10-11, we had about 25 teams, so about 300 players, 300-350.”

Simon, an ex-banker from Montreal who started playing ice hockey at the age of five, says he left his gear in Canada when he first came to China. Several years later, he works for a company that builds rinks in Asia.

He says that as far as Asian cities go, Beijing is quite spoiled.

“To have four full ice sheets is quite rare," noted Simon. "And that is one of the reasons ice hockey is growing here a lot more quickly than in places like Hong Kong. Hong Kong has got a huge hockey following, a lot of kids playing, but they are very limited by the number of ice surfaces they have.”

Just getting started

Lane Moore, another coach who is helping out at the Flying Tigers camp, says ice hockey is just getting started in Beijing.

“With their development of new rinks, new ice surfaces, the numbers in Beijing are going through the roof and I am hearing in Shanghai it is the same way and I just think the potential for ice hockey in China is going to keep going,” Moore said.

Both he and Kevin Masters say they never expected to be running an ice hockey camp in China, and certainly not on the fourth floor of a shopping mall. But they say the publicity from curious shoppers helps build interest in a sport that they say is quickly on its way from a novelty to the mainstream.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP..