Cricket, to many Americans, is a baffling sport, slow-paced and governed by incomprehensible rules. But in New York City, where the game is played in a half-dozen amateur leagues, mostly by people of Caribbean and South Asian descent, it is organized around a principle that will make sense both to aficionados and to those who can’t tell a wicket from a tickle: Fandom has its rewards.

“Very often, if you go to a cricket match and attach yourself to one of the teams, you will be given food at the end of the day,” said Joseph O’Neill, whose novel “Netherland” centers on an immigrant New Yorker’s scheme to build an international-level cricket stadium. Fans, he pointed out, are “not very numerous,” so the players happily share their spicy chicken or goat curries “as a matter of courtesy.”

Bring along a bottle of rum to share, Mr. O’Neill added, and “very quickly, you will have a party on your hands.”

For frugal sports fans, there may be no better introduction to the diversity of New York.
DESCRIPTIONLibrado Romero/The New York Times Cricket in Van Cortlandt Park.

But cricket — which you can watch most Sundays at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, at Marine Park in Brooklyn and at the Staten Island Cricket Club (check www.newyorkcricket.com for details) — is just the tip of New York’s minor-sports iceberg.

Forget big-league baseball, ice hockey, football and tennis: they’re overhyped, overcrowded and expensive. All over the five boroughs, decidedly urban games like handball and stickball are as popular as ever, imports like cricket and rugby are flourishing, and even Ping-Pong is surging.

Best of all, these games cost nothing to watch, almost nothing to play and will often lead tourists and residents alike into corners of the city they might otherwise never see.

Handball, for example, is ubiquitous throughout the city. Played by everyone from preteens to aging masters, it’s like open-air racketball, but with no racket, just one wall and the symphony of the New York streets disrupting your concentration. The game’s mecca, says Peter Duffy, who wrote about the sport in this week’s New York magazine, is the Seaside Courts on Surf Avenue in Coney Island.

“You can walk down there any day of the week,” Mr. Duffy told me by phone, “and see the current national champion, Cesar Sala. You can see greats from the past: Joe Durso — who won nine singles titles in the ’80s and ’90s, profiled by Sports Illustrated, an amazing, over-the-top character — is there almost every day.”
handballJacob Silberberg for The New York TimesHandball on Coney Island.

And this week is the time to go, as the National One-Wall Championships run today through Sunday, where Mr. Sala is expected to face his longtime rival, Satish Jagnandan — to Mr. Duffy, they are the Nadal and Federer of the handball world. The championships are free to watch, and since you’re in Coney Island, Nathan’s isn’t far away.

If you want to actually play handball, the Seaside Courts may not be your best bet — unless you’re a serious player. But with around 2,000 handball courts all over the city, you’ve got other options. Mr. Duffy, for one, prefers the courts at Luther Gulick Park, at Columbia and Delancey Streets, near his Lower East Side apartment.

“That’s casual,” he said. “I mean, sometimes there’s nobody there. A lot of times, it’s high school kids. It’s not a major handball scene — it’s easy for me to go over there with my daughter and knock a handball around.”

While handball is everywhere, its street-born sibling stickball is less common. Like baseball but played in the street, with a stick or broom handle for a bat and fire hydrants, cars or manhole covers serving as bases, stickball thrived in a New York where automobiles had not yet come to dominate the asphalt. Today, the game is less the province of idle kids and more the pastime of adults who organize into leagues.

The oldest in the city is the New York Emperors Stickball League, founded in 1985. During the regular season (April through July), games take place Sundays on the aptly named Stickball Boulevard at Seward Avenue in the Castle Hill section of the Bronx (you can take the No. 6 train to East 177th Street—Parkchester station then walk about six long blocks), where the bases are painted, instead of being stoops and sidewalk cracks. Of the league’s nine teams, three seem to dominate: seven-time champs the Bronx Emperors, eight-timers the Gold and the Leland Legends, currently in first place.

During this year’s playoffs, which take place Aug. 9 and 16, Vido Creales, an infielder for the Emperors and the league’s treasurer, told me he sees a formidable opponent in the Legends’ John (Boobie) Ayala, a former hothead whose temperament has mellowed over the years, just as his batting has improved. This year, he hit .416 and was chosen the league’s Most Valuable Player.

But the Emperors, said Mr. Creales, have Jay Robles, who’s hitting .524. “He hits the ball solid every single time up,” he said.

With the sport mostly restricted to league play, pick-up games are hard to come by. But during the preseason, Mr. Creales said, the teams are much more open to drop-in players; just swing by Stickball Boulevard.

Likewise, joining in a rugby match presents a bit of a challenge, partly because the playing fields are on Randalls Island, in the East River below the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (formerly the Triborough), but also because New York area players are an elite group. The women’s team is one of the top three in the country, said David Martin, who is on the board of directors of the New York Rugby Club.

Because they are so good, with several being members of the United States national team, watching them may be better than joining in. Mr. Martin, a columnist for Rugby magazine, suggests paying close attention to Phaidra Knight — “one of the best players in the world; she’s just real physical, real fast, a brilliant player” — and Jenna Flateman, who’s “incredibly small and incredibly fast.”

But if you make the trek to Randalls Island (a taxi ride is probably best for out-of-towners, said Mr. Martin, though frugal travelers may want to brave the M35 bus from 125th Street) on Saturdays in the spring or fall, bring a beach chair and a snack. The facilities, currently under renovation, are pretty minimal, and when I asked Mr. Martin if there was any food worth eating nearby, he paused for a second before issuing a definitive “No.”

Table tennis — a k a Ping-Pong — is about as accessible as Randalls Island is hard to reach. At least a dozen Ping-Pong clubs exist across the boroughs, most of which charge fees to rent tables (members pay less) and some of which can be, well, less than friendly.

“One in Chinatown is pretty serious,” said James Cooper, a creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi who also publishes Celebrity Ping-Pong magazine (www.cppmag.com), in which he interviews notables like Judah Friedlander while playing table tennis. “I played there for a year, and sort of barely just about got talking with some of the regulars.”

He was referring to the New York Table Tennis Federation (384 Broadway at White Street; 212-966-2922; from $6 a half-hour).

Mr. Cooper much prefers Spin (304 Park Avenue South, entrance on 23rd Street; 212-982-8802), a 13,000-square-foot underground club that has 17 tables, locker rooms and even two bars (although the liquor license has yet to be issued; it’s expected soon).

“During the day,” he said, it’s “very, very serious Ping-Pong — like, Olympic athletes training — and then at night, a kind of mix between serious play and social play. And then toward later in the night, sort of serious drinking.”

Spin, which opened last month, isn’t especially cheap. Non-members pay $15 for 30 minutes of play (it’s half that for members). But this is the place to watch some of the best players in the city battle each other, like Brad and Brandon Belle, 14-year-old twins who are training for the 2012 Olympic Games. They’re funny and cocky, Mr. Cooper said: “They’ll just kind of toy with you, then they’ll wipe the floor with you.”

Which is perhaps worth the $15 it might cost to challenge them.

For truly cheap Ping-Pong, however, there are outdoor tables in parks all over the city. This Frugal Traveler recommends the two at Bryant Park, where balls and paddles are free. (Spin is holding its first Bryant Park Ping-Pong Open on Thursday.) Plus, you are close to Cafe Zaiya (18 East 41st Street; 212-779-0600), a quirky little Japanese fast-food shop. After a few rounds of table tennis, there’s nothing like a microwaveable beef bowl and some soybean-powder soft-serve ice cream. Michelle V. Agins