Sports have a way of making us nostalgic. For many, the memories are made up of grabbing a ball and bat and spending an afternoon playing pick-up games with friends. Senior Jonathan Newman remembers these lazy afternoons in high school.

“When we didn’t have class, we’d just get together and play all day,” he said. “You’d be in the field not even getting that involved all the time — you just sit and appreciate the game.”

But Newman isn’t nostalgic for baseball. His sport is cricket. The senior is from Jamaica by way of Toronto, but, by this weekend, he’ll be in heaven.

Newman and I are part of a college trip to Antigua next week. Later this month, the tiny island nation will host the finals of the Cricket World Cup, the third-largest sporting event in the world. Newman recalled that life would almost stop when Cup games were played.

“I can remember being in school and people not caring about what was going on in class,” Newman said. “We would just be waiting for a break to get to a radio and hear the scores.”

All in all, 13 students and two teachers will be spending their spring break in the Caribbean taking in the culture and some cricket matches — that is, if we figure out what’s happening on the field.

Cricket is, after all, a completely foreign game to me, and Newman has spent much of this semester teaching it to his Sports, Politics and Colonialism class. He has taught us vocabulary like “wicket,” “bowler,” “silly mid-off” and “Spirit of the Game” — the latter being a set of unwritten rules that are, ironically enough, written down.

Richard O’Brien, assistant coordinator in the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program, grew up in Trinidad and Tobago and shared a similar upbringing with cricket as Newman. The two talk frequently about the game, and O’Brien said he used to long to watch cricket, but, thanks to the Internet, he can now watch the sport whenever he wants.

“Two or three years ago, I’d be just dying,” he said. “But now you can watch highlights almost immediately after the game is played.”

Much of the appeal, O’Brien said, comes from cricket being the game of “glorious uncertainty.” It’s a game in which anything can happen.

But with its extensive book of laws (not rules, mind you), cricket also served as a tool of imperialism for the British. The significance of the Cricket World Cup being in the West Indies for the first time shouldn’t escape even novices to the game. For Newman and O’Brien, the West Indies taking the title would be a “glorious uncertainty” of its own.