Elk Stopped Play

Cricket thrives in Bahrain. The island state has a population of 500,000 and boasts about 50 teams, playing most Fridays in temperatures that can approach 50°C. The vast majority of the players are usually from the Indian subcontinent, and those Bahrainis that take part are usually either naturalised immigrants or have been educated abroad. The game came to Bahrain with expatriate oil-workers in the 1930s when the first wells were spudded in. The oldest club is in the oil village of Awali, and it is an oasis of cricketing comfort, complete with cucumber sandwiches. This is the exception, however, as the facilities at the other grounds vary from the rudimentary to the non-existent. The outfields are desert; sometimes rolled, sometimes not; sometimes sandy, sometimes concrete-hard; but always unpredictable. The best wickets are concrete strips covered with coir; Awali use a green composite mat designed for use as a swimming-pool surround. There is not a blade of grass to be seen anywhere. Nevertheless, the best four or five teams among the 16 that make up the Bahrain Cricket Association include some very strong players, mostly from Pakistan. In recent years the BCA Select XI has beaten a touring Pakistan International Airlines XI containing eight current or recent Pakistani Test players, and narrowly lost to a strong MCC side out to celebrate Awali CC’s 60th season. Desert cricket is an unforgettable experience – and camels really do sometimes wander across the pitch. Guy Parker, Wisden 1997

The euphoria surrounding Bermuda’s qualification for the 2007 World Cup dissipated when the annual Cup Match, described by the Royal Gazette as “the island’s most cherished sporting institution”, was disfigured by a punch-up. Cup Match, a two-day game between Bermuda’s biggest clubs, Somerset and St George, was being staged for the 102nd time in July 2005 when St George’s fast bowler, George O’Brien, allegedly punched Somerset batsman Stephen Outerbridge on the jaw, after Outerbridge had apparently spat at him. O’Brien took 11 wickets in his team’s first Cup win since 2000, watched each day by 7,000, more than a tenth of Bermuda’s population. Both men were forced to issue public apologies, and St George’s skipper, Herbie Bascome, was sacked as the national Under-19 coach. The Bermuda Cricket Board did, however, send O’Brien for winter training in Brisbane (as well as an anger-management course) and named both men in their provisional World Cup squad, along with David Hemp, the Bermuda-born Glamorgan batsman. Wisden 2006

For centuries, none but the most intrepid made it through the steep mountain passes to reach proudly independent Bhutan in the heart of the Himalayas. The national sport of archery protected the country against invaders, but the Bhutanese were helpless before the onslaught of television. Starting in 2001, Indian TV started threading its way through the highlands and with it came an appreciation of movies, soap operas – and cricket. “Cricket caught on just because of Star TV and Doordarshan,” says the former Indian all-rounder Roger Binny, who now coaches in Bhutan. Out of a population of 2.2 million only 200 or so are active cricketers. The ground in the capital of Thimphu (2,300m, or 7,500ft, above sea level) is small. And the season is short: it is a cold and windy place. But the children from privileged families are sent to study in India. There they learn the fame and bring it home, where cricket acquires a uniquely Bhutanese flavour. Players bow their heads in supplication to the cricketing gods before taking the field. “We do not pray for victory,” says national team captain Dhamber Singh Gurung. “We pray for each other to give our best and to emerge complete from the competition.” The Dechephu Lhakhang temple in Thimphu is the spiritual home of Bhutan cricket, and cricketers visit before every tournament to invoke the protecting deities. The team has had some success, beating Myanmar in the 2006 ACC Trophy. But Bhutan is no place for bowlers; at that altitude, the ball simply flies off the bat. One bowler, Phuntso Wangchuk, exasperated by being hammered, has resorted to storing his cricket balls in his father’s humidor in order to make them “heavier”. However, he may yet have to give up bowling for cheroot-smoking. Shahriar Khan, Wisden 2007

With its national aim of finding a balance between increasing modernisation and spiritual well-being, Bhutan is almost a metaphor for modern cricket in sovereign state form. While cricket is engaged in a battle for its soul in the face of rampant commercialism and relentless moneymaking, so Bhutan tries to balance a need to keep up with global developments without succumbing to the raging consumerism that its location ensured was kept at bay until recently.

The remote Himalayan nation has since 1971 measured its economic success not solely via figures on a balance sheet but on a scale of Gross National Happiness. In the light of this it’s a wonder that cricket has only developed in recent years.

“When people overwork and go into debt to buy ever more goods and pay the bills, they get more stressed,” the Bhutanese prime minister Jigme Thinley told the United Nations in 2012. “Working, producing and consuming less is not only good for nature but gives us more time to enjoy each other.” No wonder, then, that cricket is consistently increasing in popularity despite Bhutan being one of the poorest nations in the world and the lack of even a full-sized cricket ground in the country.

Fitting though Bhutanese principles are for the propagation of the game, it’s only very recently that cricket has gained any kind of foothold. The main reason for that is that television didn’t arrive in Bhutan until 1999. Even then, unless you were fortunate enough to have a satellite dish – an expensive accessory in such a poor country – for two years anyone switching on their television would generally find little else but endless re-runs of Bhutanese royal occasions. Then, in 2001, Indian channels were made widely available, meaning Bollywood films, Indian soap operas – and cricket.

From that standing start, in little over a decade cricket has made incredible progress: in its first major tournament, the 2004 ACC Trophy in Malaysia, a victory over Iran helped Bhutan reach the quarter-finals where, although they were hammered by Oman, who reached their target of 71 in less than five overs, Bhutan gave a decent account of themselves despite their chronic inexperience.

Roger Binny, a veteran of India’s World Cup win in 1983, became the Asian Cricket Council’s development officer for the region later that year, and made such an impression in Bhutan that he appeared on a postage stamp in 2007.

“The thing I liked there was the enthusiasm,” said Binny recently. “Bhutan’s women’s team in particular was pretty decent. We generally worked with schoolchildren and age-group teams and they had shown a lot of improvement.”

His successor, the former Sri Lankan pace bowler Rumesh Ratnayake, concurred. “These cricketers embody the true amateur spirit, they play at quite some cost to themselves for the pure love of the game,” he said. “Some sponsors are coming in but the amounts of money are so small that a club would be hard-pressed to make the money stretch to a cricket bat. And yet when they win a domestic tournament it’s like the biggest thing in their lives.”

One of the main reasons for the growth of cricket in Bhutan is the limitless enthusiasm of Damber Singh Gurung. He grew up in a remote part of the country but had made the seven-hour journey to Thimphu in his late teens in 1999, and while there managed to see one of these new-fangled televisions everyone had been talking about. Fortunately for Bhutanese cricket, the set Gurung happened to park in front of was showing a match from the 1999 World Cup. Gurung was hooked instantly, he began playing, organised Bhutan’s first cricket tournament the following year, played for and captained the national side, and is now the fresh, passionate face of the Bhutan Cricket Council.

In some ways his job – officially titled Coaching Co-ordinator – is a straightforward one as the Bhutanese mindset and the game of cricket seem well-suited. The introspection and spiritual depth of Buddhism, the Bhutanese national religion, makes cricket seem a perfect fit. Also, while archery is by far the most popular sport – every village in the country has an archery field – most traditional pastimes in Bhutan involve throwing things, from darts to large stones. However, there are problems too. Television has also brought football, which competes for the attention of Bhutanese youth, while the monsoon season means that there are only three months each year when cricket can be played. In such a mountainous country, even finding places large enough to play on is a serious issue.

“They’re either too small or they do not exist,” Gurung said of Bhutanese cricket grounds in 2011. “In the south of Bhutan there are a few grounds, but in the north and the capital Thimphu there aren’t very many. Thimphu is already very crowded. There are a lot of people who want to play cricket but don’t have anywhere to play the game.”

Gurung estimates that there are some 5,000 cricketers in Bhutan (Wisden overestimated the total population somewhat: it’s certainly nearer 750,000 than 2.2 million) and remains determined to grow that number. In 2013 he implemented a new development plan designed to get more experienced coaches helping the national sides at all levels and training coaches to go out into the countryside and give youngsters a decent grounding in the game. (Bhutan is overwhelmingly rural: the capital Thimphu is roughly the size of Redditch, while most of the population of this agricultural nation live in remote villages surrounded by farmland.)

It’s not all sweetness and light in Bhutan, however. In the early 1990s some 100,000 ethnic Nepalis fled the country after a 1988 census labelled them illegal immigrants, sparking a wave of violence. There were even bombings as recently as the government elections of 2008. The status of the Nepalese refugees remains unclear, meaning relations between Bhutan and Nepal can be tricky. Damber Singh Gurung himself played in the first encounter between the two national sides in 2003, but would probably rather forget it. Although he took the first three wickets to fall, the Nepalese racked up a whopping 397 for eight from their 50 overs, and in reply the overwhelmed Bhutanese were bowled out for 44. To date Bhutan have never beaten Nepal at any level in men’s or women’s cricket. The Bhutanese take it on the chin though as they are, of course, a very spiritual side.

Cricket has struggled to gain a foothold in Botswana ever since the construction of the Bulawayo–Mafeking railway line brought it here in the 19th century, but things are looking up. Although the game had occasionally survived in private primary schools, generations were lost to softball and football. Now though, thanks to frequent broadcasting of South Africa’s matches and significant development work, there are around 30 primary and secondary schools regularly playing in an informal league. The national team, including four native Botswanans, surprised both Kenyan and Namibian development sides before losing the final of the Africa Cup to South Africa in Zambia. And the Under-15s, similarly made up of nationals and expatriates, were competitive against Namibia, Zambia, Malawi and Lesotho. Courses sponsored by the ICC have produced nearly 80 Level-1 qualified coaches. We are also proud that the capital, Gaborone, has one of the continent’s few floodlit cricket grounds outside South Africa, even if stray cattle and the odd donkey need to be shooed off before play. More needs to be done: Botswana has fewer than 400 players using just 30 pitches. Jack Sands, Wisden 2003

Alas, a large window broken by a well-struck straight six resulted in cricket being banned from the Shell Recreation Ground. Two years earlier the siting of soccer goals 15 yards from the bat at short midwicket had added an interesting dimension to the game. Although not proving as inconvenient as one might imagine, it was a sign of things to come. Cricket in Brunei is now restricted to the Panaga ground, and is down to five teams including the now-homeless Shell Recreation Club. An early-season match between Panaga and Manggis provided an astonishing result. Manggis won the toss and elected to bat, as their Pakistani players had been attending a function in honour of a visiting government minister and were due to arrive a little late. Unfortunately, they lost seven wickets for seven and were thus all out before the missing players could arrive. Panaga won by eight wickets, and went on to win the league. Royal Brunei Yacht Club, as usual, won the Galfar Knockout Cup. Towards the end of the season, Brunei defeated Sabah and Sarawak to win the Borneo Cup, which Sabah had held for the previous two years. Derek Thursby, Wisden 2001

Saif Rehman is the pioneering force of Bulgarian cricket, a soap star, semi-finalist in Bulgaria’s Got Talent – and now symbol of egalitarianism in his adopted country. During the Communist era, Bulgarian disabled children were often hidden from view by their families, or abandoned in state institutions. While there has been undoubted progress, some attitudes have proved hard to shake. A 2008 investigation by Europe’s highest social-rights body criticised the Bulgarian government for failing to provide disabled children with an education. Two years later, it was reported that 166 had died from neglect in care homes over the previous decade. Rehman, 39, originally from Pakistan, was deeply upset at what he saw, and vowed to bring cricket to the less fortunate. In January 2012, he introduced a group of children from Sofia to table cricket, a miniature table-top version of the game for six players. By November, around 100 Bulgarians aged six to 17 with cerebral palsy, Down’s Syndrome or other disabilities were playing table cricket, and a national championship was held. “We’ve had great results,” said Rehman. “Doctors have told me that a 16-year-old opened his hand for the first time after he started playing, because he was getting movement in it and was so determined to play.” The widespread praise for the initiative inside Bulgaria persuaded Rehman to begin coaching a national squad of blind cricketers, whom he hopes to take on a tour to England in 2013. Germany and Spain are the only other countries in continental Europe to play any official disability cricket. “My ambition is to form a disability cricket league and encourage it in nearby countries,” Rehman declared. “This is my duty.” Tristan Lavalette, Wisden 2013