Raj Gopal finds two contradictory benefits from playing matches organized by the 4-year-old Pittsburgh Cricket Association.

"Cricket gives me a great way to relax and unwind," he said. "But I've got a competitive personality, and it also makes me feel energized."

Mr. Gopal, of Moon, a management consultant, is among about 200 active players participating in the regional league, which plays each Sunday on Edgebrook Field in South Park.

Since sponsoring its first matches in 2004, the nonprofit organization has doubled its number of teams to 10. The association also added a second venue for its weekly matches. Its teams now play Sunday mornings and afternoons at Linbrook Park in Franklin Park.

Players come from all over the Pittsburgh region, said Shailesh Bokil, of South Fayette, president of the association. While many are naturalized U.S. citizens, their roots are in many nations. The largest contingent is from India, but the teams include natives of Pakistan, Australia, Canada, Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom, where the game was developed centuries ago.

Lawyer Douglas Thompson, who lives in O'Hara, is the lone American player. He was introduced to the sport during his U.S. Navy service in England.

"Playing cricket lets us re-create something we miss," said Mr. Bokil, an information technology consultant. "And we are trying to get local folks involved with the game."

The association offers programs to introduce cricket to fifth- and sixth-grade pupils in the Pittsburgh area, he said. This fall the organization will take part in student orientation at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

"One group will do a demo on baseball for international students, and we will do a demo on cricket for local students," Mr. Bokil said.

While the league is only a few years old, organized cricket in southwestern Pennsylvania goes back more than a century, Mr. Thompson discovered.

Doing research in the office of the Allegheny County Recorder of Deeds, he located the 1882 incorporation papers for the Pittsburgh Cricket Club.

"The purpose for which this corporation is organized shall be the maintenance of grounds and facilities, including a club, for the improvements, perpetuation and encouragement of the game of Cricket and other athletic sports," its charter said.

Mr. Thompson found another link between the 19th century sports league and present athletic teams. The original cricket club's colors were red, black and gold.

Association teams play regulation cricket, using a hard, leather-covered ball.

Eleven-member defensive teams include nine fielders, a catcher, or wicketkeeper, and a bowler, the counterpart of a baseball pitcher. Only the catcher wears a glove.

Two batsmen, or batters, alternate hitting balls pitched by the bowler and running between two bases set up in the center of the field.

Most games take about 3¹/₂ to four hours to play.

Mr. Bokil, who has lived in the Pittsburgh area since 1996, grew up in the Indian city of Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay.

"Cricket and field hockey were the two most popular sports," he said. "India's national cricket team was really good, and the media really covered the sport ... we youngsters were fascinated with it."

While studying for a master's of business administration degree in South Carolina in the 1980s, he met other international students and faculty who were cricket fans.

The result was the Clemson University Cricket Club, which played teams from other colleges as a club sport.

When he and other players sought to set up a similar organization in Pittsburgh, the biggest problem was finding a suitable field.

A cricket pitch should be about as long as a soccer field but wider, he said. There are no foul lines in cricket.

"The batsman can hit anywhere he wants," he said.

Cricket can be a lifetime sport. The Pittsburgh organization has players ranging in age from 16 to 60.

"There are a lot of things I like about cricket," Mr. Bokil said. "It makes someone like me feel young again, since it's a sport we played when we were children.

"You meet all kinds of people from many different countries," he said. "And when you are playing, you can forget about everything else for four hours."

"I like the tradition," Mr. Thompson said. "It's more a game of finesse than power."

Mr. Gopal began playing cricket in India as a boy. "It is such a big part of the cultural background there," he said.

"The association has done a good job of creating a competitive environment where people take the game seriously. We play with the harder cricket ball, and you have to know what you are doing or you will get injured."

The local cricket season runs from mid-May until the end of September.

For information, visit pittsburghcricket.com.