GERMANY

It came as a great relief to the cricket community when the Berlin Olympic Stadium authorities reversed their decision to evict cricket from the last surviving ground in the capital. The game has been played at Körnerplatz, inside the Olympic Park, for 60 years, so Berlin’s cricketers were shocked when they turned up for the new season to discover the artificial mat and base had been pulled up, and the practice nets removed. The reason was that age-old worldwide cricket problem: flying cricket balls. The authorities were concerned that unwitting passers-by were at risk of being hit, and might press the city for compensation. A local and international media campaign, which included a Facebook group and sympathetic articles in The Times and Daily Telegraph, helped bring the two parties around the table. Happily, the mat was relaid and the cricketers returned. The dialogue has continued, and it looks like cricket will survive. Not only that, the authorities are considering making two pitches available for 2012 – the second directly behind the stadium on Maifeld, the vast lawn often used for polo and, in a different era, for Nazi Party rallies on May Day. Last season DSSC Berlin, one of ten teams in the capital, won the 50-over Championship for the seventh time. The past few years have witnessed a remarkable growth in clubs all across Germany: there are now over 70 affiliated to the German Cricket Federation, and six more on the horizon. Cricket is played to some degree in all 16 federated states, and an increasing number of schools and universities are taking to the sport. Brian Fell, Wisden 2012