Next week's ICC annual get-together promises to have more than its fair share of politicking, posturing and controversy. But, unless there is a major about-turn, it should also be a watershed for the Associates and Affiliates.

In 2009, income from the ICC's six-year media deal with ESPN-Star, worth over US$1 billion, kicks in, and while the game's big boys will still keep the lion's share, the rest will see substantial increases in their incomes.

Continue reading "Future bright beyond the Test world"

The number of people actively participating in cricket outside the Test-playing countries increased 17% in 2007, according to the ICC.

The research, carried out by the ICC's development program, was collated from 33 Associate and 58 Affiliate members. It showed that there were 338,051 male and female players in those countries in 2007, an increase of 49,158 on the previous year. Since 2002, when there were 144,047 participants, there has been a 135% rise.

Click here for the full story.

A letter in Scottish newspaper The Herald following the resignation of Fidel Castro.

The photo of Fidel Castro (Diary, February 20) has him holding what appears to be a cricket ball: thus his frown. However, a few years ago in Barbados I saw him attempt cricket, but on his terms. He was travelling to unveil a memorial when he spied a cricket game. Suddenly, all the security cars and media were put into a spin as they were diverted to the cricket pitch. There, Fidel wanted to bat and the Barbados PM bowled at him. "Stop," called Fidel. He couldn't handle the bouncing ball and demanded it be delivered full, like in baseball. The Barbados PM complied and Fidel whacked it. Then he wanted to bowl. But being Fidel he pitched as in baseball. And no amount of appealing to the rules by the Barbadian PM could get him to bowl. Like his life, he played the game but with his rules. Incidentally, he has subsequently brought in cricket gear and coaches to develop the game in Cuba.

Cuba have been invited to visit St Vincent and the Grenadines for a series of matches in May in what St Vincent's prime minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves described as a historic visit.

Gonsalves made clear his disappointment that the Cuban team, coached b Vincentian Dennis Byum, was unable to take part in the Stanford 20/20 as a result of a block being placed on them by the USA.

"They may not be able to play in the 20/20 competition but no one can stop a sovereign nation from exercising its independence to invite any team from Cuba to come and play cricket," Gonsalves said. "It is profoundly an exercise of our sovereignty and independence."

Byum said that Cuba would be competitive in what is planned to be an eight-match tour involving games against premier division teams, culminating in a match against the national side.

Cuba will not be playing in the 2008 Stanford 20/20 because of a political embargo by the USA government, the competition's board of directors has announced. Click here for the full story.

Martin Williamson argues that there's a certain double irony about the USA's actions.

It was over a year ago that we reported a cricket resurgence in Cuba and, according to yesterday’s Guardian, the movement continues unabated following the news that Cuba would join 19 other teams for the month-long Stanford 20/20 tournament to be held in January 2008.

Leona Ford was born in 1943, in Guantanamo. She is a second-generation Cuban; her father Leonard Ford came to the Cuban sugar plantations from Barbados. Leonard was the founder of the Guantanamo Cricket Club.

"The club meetings were held at my home, and when I was little I used to hear about it a lot. There were cricket photographs all over the house," Leona remembers now. After a lifetime spent working as an English professor, she decided to write a history of Cuban cricket in her retirement. The details above are only widely available because of her work. She was increasingly drawn towards the idea of re-establishing the game.

In 1998 she presented a paper on the subject at the annual meeting of the West Indian Welfare Association. In the crowd was a man named Sir Howard Cooke. Cooke was Governor General of Jamaica. What was more, he had captained one of the Jamaican teams that had visited Guantanamo CC in 1955, and remembered playing against Leona's father.

Read the full, fascinating article.

It won't get many column inches in the mainstream cricket press, but the World Cricket League, which started in Nairobi yesterday and continues into next week, features the best of the rest, the six sides just under the ten Test-playing countries. For the two finalists, the rewards are bountiful - a place among the big boys in the inaugural Twenty20 World Championship in South Africa this September, along with $250,000. For countries used to surviving on annual handouts from the ICC of less than $200,000, that's big money.

Continue reading "A long way from home"

The Daily Telegraph has a remarkable report on how cricket is making a big comeback in Cuba after disappearing for almost 30 years. It seems that Fidel Castro is worried young people on the island are becoming too Americanised and wants Cuba to feel more affinity with the Caribbean.

In the late 1990s, the game was confined to the traditional east of the island, but it soon spread to Havana, where there are more than 500 players now. "Thanks to someone in Argentina, we've got the rules of cricket translated into Spanish," Miss Ford told a journalist.

In the past couple of years, as gifts of equipment poured in from other cricket-playing nations, the potential for the sport percolated through to the powers that be.