What’s it like for a team, in just three short years, to transform from the no-pressure underdogs to the second-best in the entire country?
“It’s surreal, to say the least,” says Maaez Veqar, president of Drexel’s Cricket Club and a LeBow College of Business junior.
Back in 2012 when it was established, the team was casual in nature, with low expectations.
“We just wanted to play cricket,” says Veqar. “So we joined American College Cricket, a league where 70-plus teams participate.”
It didn’t take long to see that just playing the game wasn’t enough.
“We played our first game against Princeton University,” Veqar recalls. “We were defeated by them and that’s when I realized that this is not a joke. The desire to win came after that loss. It did not feel good and we knew we had to step it up.”
Practices increased and the team was able to secure victories against the University of Pennsylvania, qualifying them for the 2013 American College Cricket Regionals.
Their stay in the regionals was short-lived, lasting just a game, but Veqar says Dragons showed “potential … in bits and pieces.”
Veqar also had a vision to “build Drexel as a name” in cricket, not just to increase the talent pool of his team, but to also build the University as a whole.
“I know for a fact that when a lot of students apply for colleges from countries like Australia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and others, the first thing they look at after the school itself is whether it has a cricket team,” Veqar explains. “It’s in our blood. We love it.”
The team began to realize its potential when it qualified for the regionals again in 2014, and made it to the regional finals against the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, a Top 5 team in American College Cricket: the second-year players against a juggernaut.
“We knew it was going to be tough so we spoke about it in the team huddle and just said, ‘We are going to give them a fight,’” says Veqar. “We played an unbelievable final and just fell short of defeating them. It was heart-breaking but, at the same time, we were proud of ourselves.”
Keying off that success, Drexel’s team made it to the 2015 national tournament in March.
Happy to have come so far in such a short time, Veqar says they were fine with whatever result they achieved, as long as they played hard.
Drexel’s hard-nosed play turned into a semi-final match with the defending American College Cricket champions, the University of South Florida, then ranked first in the country. And, at first, it didn’t go well.
“We were getting hammered, as expected,” Veqar says. “But who knew we would fight back the way we did? We ended up winning the closest game we have ever played. We were in tears.”
“Two years ago, we lost to Princeton University, a team not even in the Top 40,” Veqar adds. “And that day, we defeated the No. 1 team. It was unbelievable.”
The Dragons didn’t win the championship against the University of Texas-Dallas, but Veqar’s squad achieved his goal — Drexel was now a name in the college cricket world.
“You can throw sticks, stones, hurdles, whatever you want, at the team, but they will come back stronger and prove that Drexel cricket is no joke,” Veqar says. “We were proud to wear the Drexel logo on our jerseys, we fought tooth-and-nail, and the journey wasn’t easy, but it was extremely memorable.”
Veqar knows the team has the talent to take the championship in March 2016.
“We always played with a nothing-to-lose mentality but this is the first time Drexel will be favorites to reach the finals,” he says. “I want to give the team the taste of victory, the pride of knowing that we are the champions. It’s the best feeling in the world.”