At first, the 18th-century fortress island of Suomenlinna, just off the coast of Helsinki, Finland, seems an unlikely location for a cricket match. Certainly, the tourists are baffled, as they look down upon us from the grass-covered battlements above. So too do the army cadets doing laps of our makeshift ground. However, it was the presence of fortifications such as Suomenlinna that first brought Finland to the attention of the British navy. And where the navy went, cricket came too.I moved to Finland in 2014, and found, to my surprise, that cricket was thriving. Most cricketers here come originally from India or Pakistan but there are players from every Test-playing nation, as well as from many others, including Switzerland, Germany, Afghanistan, Nepal, and, of course, Finland. Empire Cricket Club, who Ive been playing for regularly, contains an especially diverse mix. Members include students and software developers, researchers and scientists, a restaurateur, a theatre producer, and a former Navy commander with a passion for contemporary dance.Recently, Nicholas Hogg wrote beautifully about how cricket can provide a home for the homeless, a new family for refugees. That is certainly true in Finland. One player here - who asked not to be named - left his native Pakistan due to death threats following his campaigns for womens rights. After 20 days in Russia and three months in a refugee camp, he is once again relishing the chance to bowl fast and drill near yorkers over long-on. I was not aware there was such a great cricket community here, he told me. Ive been able to meet people from so many different cultures.The game does more than just the game, explains Jo Hadley, chairman of Empire CC. It was this that first drew Hadley, a retired UK policeman, to cricket. He had never been interested in any sport until moving to Finland in 2002 to complete a doctorate in sociology. He is now one of those selflessly dedicated figures at the heart of so many small cricket clubs. Somewhere in a Finnish suburb are these people dressed in white playing a quintessentially English game, he says. I was attracted to that poetry.Hadley contrasts cricket to the example of pes?pallo, a Finnish version of baseball invented by eugenics-championing fascist Lauri Pihkala, and promoted from above after the rights victory in Finlands 1918 civil war. Crickets growth, by contrast, has been an organic one fuelled by immigration - a journey from the periphery towards the centre. I see cricket as the sporting expression of multicultural Finland, says Hadley.But both pes?pallo and cricket have been encouraged by the military at various times. The Suomenlinna match, known as the Viapori Cup, is a legacy of a time when a few cricket-mad Finnish naval officers organised cricket games to build team spirit among cadets. Contested since the early 2000s, the Viapori Cup is now a very relaxed affair.Much of the cricket played here is far more competitive. Credit for its organisation should go to the Finnish Cricket Association (FCA), founded by Andrew Armitage in 1999 and approved by the ICC the following year. I wanted to see cricket here develop into something more than just the occasional match, says Armitage, a former banker who moved here with his Finnish wife in 1988. I wanted us to get better organised - it was something I was passionate about.The FCA has certainly succeeded. Today, there are 30 registered clubs, mostly in the south of the country, and around 600 licenced players. Cricket here is sponsored by Hardys Wine (just like the England cricket team) and the FCA has kit deals with MKK-Newbery. In the summer, there are leagues for both 40-over cricket and Twenty20. In Finlands long, dark winters, cricket moves indoors. Outside of the FCA structure, there are popular tape-ball leagues as well as one-off games like the Viapori Cup or Cinders - an annual two-innings contest between Empire and Stadin Krikettikerho (SKK).The FCAs major triumph has been the opening of a new purpose-built cricket ground in Kerava, 25 minutes north of Helsinki. The ground was officially opened in June 2014, in the presence of Mike Brearley, Lord Mervyn King, and various Finnish dignitaries. Given that most matches in Finland are played on gravel outfields (many of Finlands sports grounds are converted into ice rinks come winter), playing on the grass at Kerava feels like a serious luxury. This summer, the ground played host to the first Nordic-Baltic tournament between Finland, Sweden and Estonia.But how did cricket get here in the first place? In 2015, Wisdens short overview of cricket in Finland includes no mention of anything before 1952, when a visiting team from the Agincourt, a Royal Navy destroyer, decided that a spot of cricket at Helsinkis new stadium would be a perfect way to mark the Olympic Games. But there is evidence that cricket was played in Finland almost 100 years earlier. Tony Lurcocks delightful No Particular Hurry: British travellers in Finland 1830-1917 - the second of a three-volume compendium - contains several accounts of cricket played here as far back as the 1850s.It was during this period that Britain and France united against Russia in the Crimean War. In the UK at least, the Crimean is now best known for the charge of Light Brigade, and the Baltic theatre has been largely forgotten. Not so here. Finland had been taken from Sweden by Russia in 1809 and remained a Grand Duchy when the British navy sailed into the Baltic Sea. But with the Russian navy sheltering in their base at Kronstadt, there wasnt much fighting to be done. So when the British sailors were not raiding Finnish coastal settlements (many seemed unable to grasp the fact that Finland was not the enemy but effectively an occupied nation), they contented themselves with playing cricket on the islands. Lurcock finds examples of cricket in the writings of William Gerard Don, a ships doctor, and Rev Robert Edgar Hughes, both of whom were in the Baltic in 1854-55. Picnic and cricket parties were frequent, writes Hughes, and the lonely rocks were made to ring with the sound of French and English laughter.There is one further cricket-related oddity. In August 1854, under public pressure to be seen to be doing something, the British fleet did destroy the fortress of Bomarsund on the ?land islands between Sweden and Finland. Lurcock notes that the bombardment gave its name, rather bizarrely, to a village in Northumberland. In 1974, Bomarsund won the UKs National Village Cricket Championship.After unsuccessfully bombarding Suomenlinna (Im tempted to draw a comparison with my own, ahem, explosive legbreaks) the British fleet returned home. Thereafter, incidences of cricket matches in Finland are sporadic. Lurcock tells of Edward Rae, a wealthy London stockbroker, who organised a cricket match against an all-Lapland XI in 1873. They were all out for 0 in their second innings. But Rae was just over the border in Russia at the time.It was not until the 1960s that cricket began to be played in Finland more frequently. Matches took place between the British Embassy and a team of Finnish admen calling themselves the Kingdom of Palmerston (it was Lord Palmerston, a cabinet member during the Crimean War, who advocated the return of Finland from Russia to Sweden). Most of the stories from this period focus more on boozy journeys to Stockholm than on the cricket itself.In 1972, a group of cricketers decided to break away from the British Embassy and form the Helsinki Cricket Club, Finlands first. Their belief was that the sport would be better served in the hands of permanent residents than transient diplomats. They were right. One of their number - a Jamaican fast bowler by the name of Ira Ebanks - has become a legendary figure in Finnish cricket. He is still a regular presence at the boundary edge, groaning at yet another Empire batting collapse. Empire itself was founded in 2003 following a period of rapid expansion for cricket in Finland. The Nokia boom years of the 1990s saw the influx of a new, tech-savvy workforce, many of whom came from India and Pakistan. They brought their love of cricket with them, and clubs formed in the cities of Turku, Tampere, and Vantaa. Although Nokia collapsed in 2013 and Finlands economy remains shaky, Helsinkis tech and start-up scenes continue to provide a major draw. So does the countrys excellent education system and free university tuition (although fees for overseas students will be introduced from 2017).So what does the future hold for cricket in Finland? While the earliest cricket matches here involved the English, today the sport feels untouched by colonial traces. It is not an expat game but, as Hadley has said, a reflection of a complex multicultural experience. The FCAs aim is to further integrate cricket into Finlands sporting structures. Finns tend to like quirky things, says Maija Scamans, formerly captain of Finlands first womens cricket team, now the FCAs Operations Director. Cricket is an individual game within a team context. I think that appeals to the Finnish psyche.The FCA has been holding cricket summer camps and coaching in schools since 2004. 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We were able to get a lot of players some quality work.Barry J. Sanders had 76 all-purpose yards and scored a touchdown. Sanders, whose father, Barry, won the Heisman Trophy for Oklahoma State in 1988, is a graduate transfer who played for Stanford last season. The younger Sanders scored on a 1-yard run in the first quarter and nearly scored again later in the quarter. He was stopped at the 1 after weaving through the Lions for a 57-yard punt return.It was pretty neat, said Gundy, who was the quarterback for Sanders dad. We all thought about him (Barry J. Sanders) making plays, and he was tremendous. There is a lot of pressure on him, unjustified, but thats the world we live in.Mason Rudolph completed 18 of 26 passes for 188 yards and two touchdowns for the Cowboys. Seales finished with three catches for 61 yards in the opener for both teams.Kaelyn Henderson ran 13 times for 68 yards and a touchdown for Southeastern Louisiana.Madre Harper, a freshman, recovered a muffed punt in the end zone for Oklahoma States first points of the season. Chris Carson barreled through several Lions on a 14-yard touchdown run, and Seales stretched out for a 24-yard scoring grab to make it 21-0 with 8:10 left in the first quarter.Obviously, it didnt start out the way we wanted, Southeastern Louisiana coach Ron Roberts said. We kind of got overwhelmed in the first, and they jumped out on us. We had a huge number of special teams miscues, and we just have to clean a lot of things up.Henderson scored Southeastern Louisianas only touchdown on a 26-yyard run in the second quarter.dddddddddddd.We knew coming in that Oklahoma State was a great team, but our goal was to come in and play clean and play well, and we didnt do that, Roberts said.TAKEAWAYSSE LOUISIANA: Very little. The Lions brought in a new offensive coordinator Matt Barrett from Georgia Southern, and they netted just 203 yards.Well, obviously, very disappointing, Barrett said. We thought we prepared well. Obviously, were playing a great football team and a tremendous, talented defensive front, and hats off to them.OKLAHOMA STATE: The Cowboys did what they were supposed to do against Southeastern Louisiana, an FCS program that went 4-7 last season.The Cowboys said during the preseason that they wanted to test their running game, but they didnt focus on it enough to learn much. They ran 37 times for 142 yards, and their leading rusher, Jeff Carr, had 42 yards on six carries.We made a few strikes running the ball, Gundy said. How much better we are at it, Im not sure. It looks like it to me that were a little better at it.PLAY OF THE GAMEOklahoma States Devante Averette stripped Southeastern Louisiana quarterback DShaie Landor, then pushed the ball up the sideline while he tried to recover it. He grabbed it and flipped it behind him as he spun while going out of bounds, and Ramon Richards caught it and ran it in for a 9-yard touchdown that gave the Cowboys a 38-7 lead.UP NEXTSE LOUISIANA: The Lions play at Southern Utah.OKLAHOMA STATE: The Cowboys will host Central Michigan. The Chippewas made the Cowboys work to escape with a 24-13 win in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, last year.LAST WORDWe asked them to come out and play well early and take the game over, and they did that, Gundy said.---Follow Cliff Brunt on Twitter (at)CliffBruntAP ' ' '