Off The Beaten Track: Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Lithuania, Macedonia, Tonga plus more
Mahendra Mapagunaratne - 31 August 2001
Bulgaria
Professor Nikolay Kolev of the National Sports Academy in Sofia has
requested assistance from the European Cricket Council to introduce the game
among Bulgarian Universities and High Schools. There are moves to finalise a
comprehensive development plan for the game after the holidays on 17
September.
Another point of interest is the return to Bulgaria of John Galletly - the
Englishman considered to be the father of cricket in that country.
Burkina Faso
We reported the visit by Hoosain Ayob - ICC Africa Development Manager to
Burkina Faso. This country is in luck's way since the Nigerian establishment
Howzat Foundation for Cricket too has shown an interest in developing the
game there. Olisa Egwuatu - Howzat's Secretary and Head Coach is likely to
make a trip to Ouagadougou with Hoosain's blessings.
Lithuania
Progress in Vilnius since Chris Butler has started coordinating efforts to
introduce Kwik Cricket with Douglas Abrahams. In the meantime, the Director
of Schools Sport of the Vilnius Municipality has given his blessings to the
project on condition there would be no cost to the Municipal Authorities. It
is hoped that Ian Stuart - European Cricket Development Manager would do his
utmost to help these two courageous promoters of the game in the Baltics.
Macedonia
Macedonia maybe in the midst of a civil war but a little bit of common sense
on the part of Alison Smith of the European Cricket Council may have gone a
long way towards introducing the game of cricket in Skopje.
Upon a request by Dejan Siljanovski of the Sports & Youth Agency in Skopje,
Alison was good enough to send some cricket videos and manuals of the game
much to the delight of Siljanovski and company who plan to show the video
among the student clubs it controls - 60 of them.
This wouldn't be sufficient however - once the students get a taste of
cricket thay would want to test their skills for real and ECC would do well
to send them some bats and balls. Though ideally an ECC Coach should be
visiting Skopje the unsettled environment is preventing ECC from sending
one. Maybe next summer.
Tonga
Siale Puloka - President of Tonga Cricket Association is an angry man. He
wonders why his poor association is served with the same spoon as those
associations who are not as proactive as his.
He gives examples:
US$15,000 for the Fiji tour in April 1999,
US$19,000 for the tour to Sydney - Australia in November 1999 and
US$25,000 for the Melbourne - Australia tour in November 2000.
In other words he had to find close to US$60,000 in the past two years for
foreign tours only. 'Why cannot', he asks 'ICC reimburse some of these
expenses?' and this is indeed food for thought.
Puloka has a solution too. He suggests the ICC launch an annual fund of
US$200,000 to assist proactive ICC Affiliate Members to be given away at
US$15,000 per country. Whether ICC would take his proposal seriously is
another matter but ICC may do well to dwell on what Puloka had to say
finally: "God help those who help themselves - but not in cricket". But then
ICC has never reached such lofty heights!
Comments
American jazz musician Oren Jacoby has seen schoolboy cricket during
a visit to LABADEE in HAITI. Could anyone elaborate on this one?
Take a look at www.BiStamp.com and you would see six beautiful
cricket stamps depicting W.G. Grace/ Shane Warne/ Don Bradman/Ian Botham/
David Gower/ & Gary Sobers. No big deal? Well! these stamps are issued by
none other than the former Soviet Republic of TAJIKISTAN! Check-out the new
stamps issued by Tajikistan dated 20 June 2001. These stamps come under
batch no.38.
I would love to hear from you with stories similar to above. Just write to me on - minorcricket@hotmail.com
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