Elk Stopped Play

Cricket has now nudged closer to what might be its ultimate destination: Timbuktu. From unlikely beginnings in one school’s English Club in 2001 (following a chance remark by the British consul Violet Diallo), cricket has been introduced into ten schools across Bamako, the capital of Mali. Unfortunately few people have a clue where Mali is. (“You mean Bali?” “No, it’s in Africa.” “Ah, Malawi!” “No! M–A–L–I. It’s in West Africa!”) It’s a poor, sand-rich, land-locked country with an extraordinarily rich cultural heritage. But since it’s a former French colony, that heritage does not include cricket. Or it didn’t. Malians established their cricket association, AMaCrik, in 2003, and the first inter-school tournament took place in 2004. When shown models of bats and asked to produce something similar, a local carpenter said, “Yes of course . . . but what are they?” The carpenter, Yacouba Coulibaly, has since scaled a steep learning curve, producing wooden bats and wickets for us; and thanks to some generous donations we now have some sets of “real” kit. But they are hard to get and expensive to transport here. The climate is unyielding, and we play a lot on sand and rock. Even so, regular turnout at Saturday-morning training sessions in Bamako now exceeds 90 people, and there are early developments in other towns. “When you hear it explained, you may not see why people like cricket,” said one teacher, “but once you start playing then you get hooked.” This teacher is now AMaCrik’s president. Timbuktu? (Officially it’s Tombouctou.) It’s more than 900km from Bamako, but we are heading in that direction. Phil Watson, Wisden 2005

What is said to be the oldest surviving sports photograph in Mexico, dating from 1865, shows a cricket team with Emperor Maximilian in their midst, and Mexico City CC, founded in 1894, has been playing on its present site for 40 years. The ground at the Reforma Club is picturesque – with a lush outfield set among giant eucalyptus trees – and the club is particularly vibrant and sociable. At 7,200ft above sea level, it is believed to be the second-highest turf wicket in the world. At present more than 150 cricketers play in competitions every year, between October and March. There is also now an Australian coach, Elliot Cartledge. In 2000 the club hosted touring teams from Belize, Memorial CC of Houston (for the 15th successive year) and the British and Dominion Club of Los Angeles. Although the game was introduced to Mexico by the English, the club has outgrown these roots and embraces players from all backgrounds and abilities. Keith Foster, Wisden 2001

There is a tangible sadness about the 1865 photograph of Maximilian I standing among cricketers. Like much of the 19th century, the period around 1865 was a turbulent one in Mexican history and it had been hoped that the installation of the Habsburg prince – with the backing of Napoleon III and Mexican monarchists – might bring stability to the region. When the photograph was taken Maximilian had been in Mexico for less than a year, and was trying hard to make a difference despite the constant battles between his French troops and Benito Juarez’s liberal forces. Shocked by the poverty and hardship he saw in Mexico City, Maximilian cut working hours, abolished child labour and cancelled any debts over ten pesos owed by Mexican workers. Despite all this he found himself opposed and frustrated at every turn, and the neighbouring United States refused even to recognise his rule.

The cricket match must have provided a rare moment of relief and relaxation for him. The photograph, now in the Musée Royal de l’Armée in Brussels, shows a peaceful scene, 22 players spread out in a line along the pitch during a break in play. Maximilian himself is standing by the stumps in shirt-sleeves and white trousers, suggesting that he was most likely playing in the game himself. There couldn’t have been a greater contrast between the cut-and-thrust of 19th-century Mexican politics, the social problems he was trying to tackle head on, not to mention very real danger of overthrow and assassination, and the chance to spend an afternoon on the cricket field where nothing mattered but the score and the exhilaration of playing the game.

In the months that followed the photograph being taken, Napoleon III would withdraw his troops for more pressing matters in Europe, leaving Maximilian exposed and facing inevitable downfall. His wife Carlotta travelled to Europe, flitting from palace to palace, begging in vain for assistance. But, having refused to leave Mexico himself and fighting a determined but futile rearguard action with depleted forces, Maximilian was eventually captured by Juarez’s troops and executed by firing squad in May 1867 at the age of just 34.

The 1865 photograph is a typical one of the age, all self-conscious chest-puffing, rigid poses and austere faces granite-still behind elaborate facial hair. A couple of players lounge on the ground, most are standing. Maximilian is at the centre, surrounded for once by people he could trust and with whom he could relax. Whether it was the only game he played or was one of many, the calmness of the scene and the knowledge that he had less than two years to live lends it extra poignancy, a rare moment of peace in three turbulent and ultimately tragic years.

It’s likely that the location of shot is the ground at Napoles. We have a terrific description of cricket there around that time from William Henry Bullock in his 1865 book Around Mexico. If the earliest Wisdens had contained a Cricket Round the World section instead of the rules of quoits and lists of canals, there’s every chance this would have been in there: in style and content it wouldn’t even be greatly out of place in the Almanack today.

“During the voyage out from England I had heard that cricket was played in the country, but supposed it would turn out to be cricket of that degenerate sort which one finds occasionally played by the English residents in different parts of Europe,” Bullock wrote. “So that when I got to the ground, and found an excellent pavilion, a scoring box, visitors’ tent, the field marked out with flags with the well-known letters MCC (Mexico, not Marylebone, Cricket Club) marked upon them, and some 18 or 20 players in flannels and cricket shoes, I was a little astonished, and soon found out that I had to do with a very different sort of cricket to what I had expected. Perhaps the most surprising part of the performance was that the best player on the ground was a Mexican, whose bowling and batting did infinite credit to the training which he received at Brice Castle School.

“Among the English players were several gentlemen close upon 60 years of age, who all expressed to me their conviction that they owe much of the health and energy which they still possessed, in spite of 40 years’ residence in Mexico, to having stuck through thick and thin to their Sunday cricket. They assured me that they had never allowed political events to interfere with their game which they had pursued unconcernedly, more than once, in view of the fighting going on in the hills around them.

“Being fully alive to the fact that cricket is nothing without beer, there is always a liberal supply on the ground, of a very excellent quality, supplied by the firm of Blackmore – a name revered, beyond all others, by Englishmen in Mexico.”

At the time of Bullock’s visit, as hinted at by the players he spoke to, cricket was already well established in Mexico. In fact there is documented evidence that the game was being played there as far back as 1827. Found recently among the papers of Daniel and Lewis Price, brother traders in Mexico in the 1820s, was an 1838 pamphlet produced by the Mexico Union Cricket Club. It contains a wealth of information about the club, including the anniversary dinner held on February 21, 1838, to mark the 11th birthday of the club, confirming Mexico Union as one of the earliest cricket clubs in the world, and certainly one of the oldest outside Britain.

The Union took its cricket seriously too: dress code was strictly flannel jacket, white trousers and a straw hat, and anyone found on or near the pitch on match-day in unsuitable attire was liable to a fine of two dollars. There were also fines for lateness (matches commenced at 8am), failing to turn up for matches and even for withdrawing from games without written notice at least two days in advance.

The list of members’ names betrays the expat nature of the club; most of the members are diplomats and merchants. One perhaps surprising inclusion is that of Joel Roberts Poinsett, who was appointed the United States’ first-ever Minister to Mexico in 1825. Poinsett was known at the time for his fiercely anti-British standpoint, so to find him listed as a member of a club devoted to the most British of games is a curious thing. Maybe he set politics aside at the weekends; maybe he was just in a good mood and well disposed towards humanity in general, having just discovered south of Mexico City the plant known to this day as the poinsettia.

It started with a Scotsman, Wilf McKee, who gradually collected the kit and the trophy. In 2002 and 2003, there were season-long competitions between India and the Rest of the World, with over 20 regulars. Every week, the match was written up in the Ulaanbaatar Post, the local English-language newspaper. The September finals, played in the National Stadium, used the same bit of grass where enormous Mongolian wrestlers had just been fighting for the national championship: nice stadium, uneven bounce. Everyone played with the abandon of beginners; running between the wickets was joyous and selfish, as the UB Post reported. “We were entertained with one of the typical and traditional spectacular runouts that combine lunacy, beauty and tragedy in a few anarchic seconds, bringing tears to the eyes of even the most hardened observers.” Cricket continues now, but less regularly. And we have never equalled Mongolia’s only golf course in terms of harnessing the locals’ skills. Due to the length of the course they employed mounted spotters, who charged away on horseback after every drive to follow the ball’s path. Our outfield, after the rain starts, is so slow that the only way of getting the ball anywhere is heaving it up in the air and aiming for a fielder who can’t catch. The weather is unpredictable, and dust storms, snow and violent thunder can all appear rapidly from a clear sky, but the surrounding mountains make for a spectacular backdrop whatever the weather. Other local factors: anybody who bowls fast to a newcomer is looked down upon; underarm bowling is allowed; it is difficult to make the Americans not throw the bat away after hitting and to run straight instead of in circles (one Mongolian hit the ball and ran to the fence to get his four runs); catches are dropped deliberately to make the game interesting and chivalrous. We do allow beers and smokes on the field. Richard Sandali and Babu Joseph, Wisden 2006

If Mongolia has anything going for it in cricket terms, it’s space. With a population density of just five people per square mile – the lowest in the world – in a nation of more than 600,000 square miles, you shouldn’t in theory take too long to find somewhere to bash a set of stumps into the ground and start picking sides. However, the game has struggled to take any kind of hold since the entry above, and that’s despite the enthusiasm that bursts out of every sentence.

Where some countries seem to take naturally to cricket despite there being no history there, others don’t. Not in the slightest. Some people can be won over by others’ clear love for the game or just satisfy a curiosity piqued by watching the foreigners going about their weird sport in the park.

None of this appears to have happened in Mongolia. Admittedly the prevailing meteorology makes cricket viable only three months a year, but there’s more to it than that. It could be because there’s no tradition of stick sports out there in the middle of Asia. The Mongolians love their wrestling, their archery and their horse racing above all else. Mongol history and culture are steeped in all three and have been since the days of Genghis Khan. Not for nothing do those three events make up the Naadam festival each year in Ulaanbaatar, which is also known as ereen gurvan naadam, or the “three games of men”. In July each year the Naadam stadium, where the cricketers above were fortunate to be allowed to play, is filled to capacity to watch a festival of manliness.

Maybe cricket – with its long pauses, gentle rhythms and limited opportunities to have a good roar and shout – just doesn’t suit the Mongolian temperament. In addition Wilf McKee seems to have disappeared from the cricket scene, although the Mongolian Cricket Club is still going, and there was talk a couple of years ago of an Ulaanbaatar cricket club too, but it seems at the moment that if the game survives at all it’s purely an expat activity.

Viewed by many as a throwback to the country’s colonial past, cricket here has often struggled for acceptance, and until recently had all but died out. Due to the country’s political isolation, it may be some time yet before there is any repeat of the MCC matches against Rangoon Gymkhana and All-Burma in 1926-27 (Maurice Tate had match figures of ten for 72). But, led by one of Myanmar’s most famous action movie stars, 65-year-old Nyunt Win, who began playing when he was nine, the game is enjoying a small revival. Through the efforts of some expat Australians, the country’s first permanent (and playable) turf wicket was developed in 2003, at the Pun Hlaing Golf Estate in northern Yangon (formerly Rangoon). Due to the weather (it’s either pouring with rain or unbearably hot) the season is short, from December to February. But there is a national league, with eight teams containing an eclectic mix of ages and nationalities, playing a 30-over league and knockout and, if time permits before the hot season, a 13-over tournament. We have introduced the game to schools in Yangon and Mandalay, and the children are enthusiastic. The only real international games at present are between the Ayeyarwaddy Cricket Club, based at Pun Hlaing, and the Siam Cricket Club in Bangkok, with the boys from Bangkok winning the Andaman Trophy on their last trip to Yangon. Stu Bennett, Wisden 2006