The Shorter Wisden 2013
Page 59
Marin embarked upon a crash-course world tour, taking in England’s 2009 Ashes win at Lord’s, the 2011 World Cup semi-final in Colombo, and a Rajasthan Royals game at the IPL, where he chinwagged with Lalit Modi: “I can’t comment on the mess he got involved with, but I thought his views on cricket development were pretty sound.” Shane Warne’s shirt from his Test farewell at the SCG hangs proudly on Marin’s office wall.
He grew so smitten that he pledged €5m for a sport that had only one club in the entire country before he became involved. When he first met with officials from Transylvania CC in late 2008, they were playing against bibulous touring sides at the national rugby stadium, on a plastic Flickx pitch hammered on top of a wooden board. Marin helped establish an official body, Cricket Romania, which has drawn together the country’s cricketing pockets into four clubs in Bucharest, three in Timişoara, and another in Cluj, with more to come in Constanta, Oradea and Iaşi. Most are heavily reliant on expats, often Indian medical students, but Timişoara Titans are entirely Romanian. In 2012, each club was obliged to field two Romanian-born players in league matches, and the board claim 300 Romanian children in 20 schools are now playing regularly – the best of them with a hard ball. Cricket Romania applied for ICC Affiliate membership in 2012, and expected a positive response by June 2013; they are targeting Associate status by 2020.
Their patron insists on a sustainable legacy. “It’s pretty obvious the ‘Stanford way’ is not the way to do it,” grinned Marin. “If the main guy disappears for whatever reason, there’s nothing left. So we’re trying to organise institutional sponsorship and embed it into the local system. I believe the game won’t survive in Romania if it’s confined to expats. We must create a local tradition.” Marin’s money and influence have allowed Romania to pursue projects unimaginable for other countries. Moara Vlaăsiei, a jaw-dropping ground 30km from Bucharest, is destined to be the envy of all non-Test-playing nations. Three years in the making, it has been lovingly curated by an experienced British groundsman, Alan Lewis, who has trained up a team of local groundstaff to cut, scarify, roll and mark eight strips. There are ambitious – and fully costed – blueprints for a cricket academy and indoor school at the site. Assuming the square survives the harsh Wallachian winter, Moara Vlaăsiei will open for play in Easter 2013 – as the only grass wicket between Denmark and Abu Dhabi.
JAMES COYNE
ST HELENA
A vast fundraising campaign on St Helena came up with the £24,000 needed to cover the costs of sending the island’s cricketers to their maiden international tournament, ICC Africa Division Three in Johannesburg – which meant a five-day voyage to Cape Town on the Royal Mail Ship St Helena. The squad filled the time by thrashing the boat’s crew in a series of matches played with a rope ball, then huddled around a TV set to watch Out of the Ashes, the documentary about the improbable rise of Afghanistan through the global pyramid. At a training session, the players hastily applied some green spraypaint to their pads to match the new one-day pyjama kits. Since they had developed a distinct cricketing philosophy on an isolated island of 4,000 people, it was impossible to know how they would get on. An emotional opening morning answered many questions, as Cameroon were bowled out for 36, with Dane Leo taking a hat-trick in his only over. The win over Gambia was a father-and-son affair: Gavin George, now aged 57, and David George, 33, each scored 48. Heartbreakingly, the team were beaten by Seychelles in a super over, and lost by a single run to Rwanda. Three more runs, and St Helena would have been promoted to Division Two.
SIMON GREEN
SPAIN
On September 4, Tariq Ali Awan – a 38-year-old Pakistani expat living in Madrid – emulated the great Sussex stylist Ranjitsinhji by scoring two centuries on the same day. Opening for Spain in the European Championship Division Two Twenty20 tournament in Corfu, Tariq took advantage of short boundaries at the Messonghi beach resort ground to blaze 150 not out from 66 balls, including 16 sixes, in a morning match against Estonia. The game dragged on longer than intended, due to the time spent retrieving balls from the neighbouring boccia and tennis courts, and from a hotel, which suffered a number of broken windows. Tariq returned in the afternoon to take on Portugal, and decided to step up the pace: this time he hit 18 of his 55 balls for six in an innings of 148. Perhaps wisely, Akbar Saiyad, Portugal’s 66-year-old captain, had chosen to sit it out.
JAMES COYNE
TAJIKISTAN
In 1997, at the end of Tajikistan’s messy five-year civil war that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union, Indian students and exiled Afghans began playing tennis-ball cricket in the capital, Dushanbe. Locals noticed the similarities with suzi musi, a traditional Tajik bat-and-ball game, and joined in. There are now eight men’s and two women’s teams affiliated to the Tajikistan Cricket Federation, and a Pakistani tape-ball community pining for entry. The hotbed is Shahrinaw, 50km west of Dushanbe, where cricket is played at municipality grounds and an orphanage. The TCF will have to hurdle several obstacles to expand cricket in Central Asia’s poorest country: internet use is rare, with access to social networking sites cut off at the whim of the government. And around a million Tajik men are drawn to Russia every year for work, in order to feed their families and prop up their country’s fragile economy. So it may be women that do the heavy lifting. Assadullah Khan, a former Afghanistan player now coaching in Tajikistan, has declared that, in two years, his all-Tajik women’s team will be the best in Asia. In July, Tajikistan played Afghanistan in a three-match series in Shahrinaw – the first women’s international games in each country’s history. The Afghan team made the journey north across the border with the sponsorship of a private NGO, as women’s sport was considered too sensitive an issue for Kabul. The Afghans, clad in headscarves, won 2–1.
JAMES COYNE
USA
Looking for controversial elections, habitual infighting, breakaway governing bodies and on-field talent that soldiers on in spite of it all? Then look no further. The USA Cricket Association general elections, postponed throughout 2011, finally took place in April, but only after 32 of 47 member leagues were denied the right to vote. USACA presidential candidate Ram Varadarajan’s 11th-hour lawsuit couldn’t reverse the board’s decision to disenfranchise leagues they considered “not of good standing”. The only non-incumbent voted on to the board was Kenwyn Williams – who pledged prior to his election to impose a gag order preventing all USACA players and employees from speaking to the media. Six months after he was elected executive secretary, Williams plunged USACA’s Facebook page into a social media meltdown. Williams was eventually suspended by USACA, before they removed him from the board altogether. Another consequence of the elections was the formation of the American Cricket Federation, a breakaway group attempting to usurp USACA as the official national governing body. The ACF staged their inaugural national championship in Los Angeles in October, with eight former USACA leagues participating. The Southern California Cricket Association won the title, and two of their players were subsequently picked to represent USA against Canada, eliminating fears that anyone playing in ACF events would be ostracised by USACA. The national team experienced mixed fortunes on the field, finishing 12th out of 16 at the ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier, but winning promotion from WCL Division Four. USA’s leading scorer in both events was stalwart Sushil Nadkarni. His hard-hitting opening partner Steven Taylor, an 18-year-old from Florida who also took part in a World XI match in Pakistan, showed signs he could become America’s first home-grown star since Bart King toured the UK at the start of the 20th century.
PETER DELLA PENNA
With special thanks to Mahendra Mapagunaratne.
Wisden always welcomes engaging tales of cricket from improbable corners of the globe. Please contact james.coyne@wisden.com
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