Indoor cricket club opens in Sterling A Fairfax Cricket Club batter waits for the ball during a match with the Metro Club in Hyattsville in 2002. Is the street in play? (Mark Gail - The Washington Post) On Sunday afternoons, drivers on Hunter Mill Road near Reston can see them almost as a mirage, a glimpse at the top of a hill - men in white playing cricket in Lake Fairfax Park. The Fairfax Cricket Club has been there since 1996, and at least two regional cricket leagues operate from spring to fall. Now, the game is going year-round. WTOP's Neal Augenstein reports that an indoor cricket club has opened in Sterling, "The Wicket Club." The club was opened by Shaista and Nasr Chaudhry on Elmwood Court, and features "three full length lanes for bowling practice, BOLA (brand) machines for versatile batting practice, one court to play an indoor game" plus a party room and area to watch international tests. Little cricket jargon for you there. "Cricket is a religion in India," Shaista Chaudhry told Augenstein, and she said the club would soon be forming leagues. Whether the lanky Augenstein will be out there bowling beamers and googlys remains up in the air. And let's not forget that the men of George Mason University's cricket team won the national collegiate cricket championship last year. A trend? Another sign of Northern Virginia's increasing diversity? Complete coincidence? You decide. After the jump is The Post's 2002 look at the Fairfax Cricket Club and its team in the Washington Cricket League, which now has 35 teams and more than 1,400 active members. Saadat Masood runs to score during the match between the Fairfax Cricket Club and the Metro Club in Chillum Park in Hyatttsville in 2002. Mark Gail - The Washington Post By Michele Clock Special to The Washington Post It's a familiar but curious site at Reston's Lake Fairfax Park: a group of men dressed in white, spread out in a circle. In the middle, players stand on a long, rectangular strip of red clay. On top of the strip, one man sprints and then pitches a red-colored ball to another, rectangular bat in hand. Himanshu Palsule, a regular at the park and the director of the Fairfax Cricket Club, is used to answering questions about his sport from passersby. "It's not uncommon to have 15 to 20 locals lined up around our game by the end," said Palsule, who started playing in his native Bombay, India, as a boy. A lot of times they come up and say, 'I've been meaning to ask, how do you score a run?'