In cricket, only the wicketkeeper is permitted to wear gloves, so the young man wearing gloves is almost certainly the specialist who performs this role for the team.

In any team, the two most experienced or most competent batsmen are usually sent in to bat first (they are referred to as "openers") in order to achieve the best score possible while the pitch is still fresh and while the bowlers are still getting familiar with how the ball bounces off it. Here the two players with bats are probably the team's openers.

My 12-year-old grandson asked where he could acquire a cricket bat the other day.

Of course, he wants it for swatting zombies.

I had no idea they had button-down collars 100 years ago. And in New Zealand at that! I would have thought they dressed like Hobbits back then.

Americans may favour rounders these days (sorry, baseball), or that thing that Americans, to the amusement of the rest of the world, call "football", but cricket does have a notable history on American shores. Benjamin Franklin brought the rules of the game to the American colonies in 1744. The first international sporting event in the world was the 1844 cricket match between the United States and Canada, at a time when cricket was effectively the U.S. national game. Even in the years of American cricket's decline, the Philadelphian J. Barton King felled wickets and batsmen like ninepins when he toured England in the early 20th century. And yes, it is a thrilling game. These New Zealand lads were on to a good thing. I bet that tall chap in the middle could play some cracking shots.

I love the looks on the boys' faces. They could be members of my junior high school or be friends with my (now grown) boys.

A wonderful picture that just shows us under all the fashion differences we are pretty much the same people.

Thank you for this and many other photos of the past.

On the right side, he could be a relative of Prince Charles, or maybe Alfred E. Neuman.

I don't know about the rest of the United States, but cricket is reasonably popular in the New York area. There are about 20 fields in the city and a number more in the suburbs. Some city high schools have teams and there are quite a few amateur leagues. While many players are immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia, the sport is slowly spreading into the wider population.