Cricketers fight for foothold in baseball-mad Cuba

HAVANA (AP) — The ball bounced off the pavement and Yordeni Caballero swung, whacking it with a soft thud and hurling his bat to the side as if he’d hit a homerun. As the 7-year-old raced down a street-turned-cricket pitch, his coach shouted instructions about a sport that’s barely known in Cuba.

The Caribbean is divided between baseball-playing countries with U.S. ties and cricket-playing islands that once belonged to the British Empire. Nowhere is more baseball-crazy than Cuba, but even here, a tiny but passionate group of men is trying to win people over to cricket, baseball’s slower-paced, more courtly British relative.