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Los Angeles based All-American born cricket team comprising mainly homeless men and ex-gang members - "The Compton Homies & the Popz," is touring Australia this month taking on sides from universities as well as inner-city and community-based teams such as the Urban Seeds, Redfern All Blacks and the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience.
When not winning matches (which they are not), they sure are winning hearts, creating goodwill, celebrating and promoting cricketing values, and of course, introducing their brand of hip hop music to Australia.
"We wrote original rap songs about our experiences in cricket and where we'd like to see cricket go," the side's captain Theo Hayes told ABC. "We break the cricket language down to a sense that kids in inner cities can relate to and it kinda of draws them closer just because of that energy."
The Guardian newspaper voted the group's cricket song "Bullets" the best cricket song of all time calling it the "unlikeliest piece of hip hop you will ever hear." (see video below).
The club, which was started in 1995 by homeless activist Ted Hayes and British Hollywood movie producer Katy Haber, offers an alternative path to gang affiliation, crime and incarceration.
"We got these youngsters, we recruited them before the gangs could," Theo Hayes told ABC. "That's very key, is getting a hold of these young children's lives and giving them something positive to steer towards before the gangs get them."
"[We tell the kids to] play every ball that's given to you in life as it comes to you with respect," Theo philosophized.
According to the club's website, countless youth including Latino and African-American ex-gang members, have been saved by the combined efforts of Ted Hayes, who is Theo's father, and Haber along with the help from volunteer coaches, including the Late Leo Magnus, and UK Cricketer Paul Smith. The rules espoused by this sport in turn teaches these kids important lessons that they can appropriate into their own life circumstances.
For Hugh Snelgrove, the team's Australian ambassador, the team was "a cross between the Jamaican bobsled team and [the film] Boyz n the Hood. They're doing a positive thing in the community and using an innovative way to do it." Incidentally, this is the team's fifth tour - they toured England in 1995, 1997, 1999 and 2001.
Disney picked up the rights to make a movie about the team in 1995. In 1999 two documentary films, Joan Chen’s “Cricket Outta Compton” and Monica Magyarosi’s “Cricket” documented the Homies tour of the UK. In 2002, the late Peter Hemmings, the then Director of The LA Opera, commissioned Michael Abels and Bernardo Solano to write an opera inspired by the CCC’s message. It was subsequently performed by the LA Youth Opera in schools around LA for two successive years.
For Emidio Cazarez, 28, a Latino member of the club for 14 years, the club has given him a new direction. "I've gone to places I never thought I'd go: to Buckingham Palace, to meet Prince William. Who would have thought that I'd be there drinking tea with him," Emidio told Fox News Latino.
Theo Hayes thanked the Southern California Cricket Association in an interview with the ABC. "The Southern California Cricket Association have the park fields and they do get some professional cricket tournaments going on over there ... every once in a while we're blessed and graced to compete on that field."
Pics and videos courtesy of Homies and the Popz (http://cricketouttacompton.com.au)