Vai dar certo!

The Art of the Possible

As the team take their final journey together back to Sao Paolo, Dan reflects on cricket in Poços and what might come next.

Poços de Caldas is truly a hotbed of cricket. The facilities are excellent and the capacity to deliver coaching across the region is already significant. The biggest strength though lies in the willingness of everyone involved with Cricket Brasil to learn. From my perspective, our job as volunteers has been primarily to augment the work taking place and bring new ideas to coaching sessions. The work the coaches are already doing is fantastic, but it never hurts to have a few new tricks and games up your sleeve on those occasions when a session doesn’t quite land as hoped.

The volunteer team that visited Brazil are all experienced CWB volunteers or experienced coaches in the UK. In Brazil the mass participation sessions CWB sees in Africa are far less common, and playing space is more limited. Where large numbers did occur, the team brought its collective experiences to the fore, helping local coaches to gain insight into what can be done to maximise engagement when the kit available and the numbers in front of you appear challenging. By sharing these skills with the coaches we work with, this CWB visit leaves a strong legacy upon which to build future projects.

None of us knew quite what to expect on this trip, but our varied and complementary skill-sets saw us support a huge variety of activities, including:

• focussed skills sessions at existing projects, including within an indiginous settlement school
• training sessions with the national team and age group teams such as the under 14s
• ‘presentation’ events, introducing cricket to large numbers in a short space of time
• an umpiring and scoring training session with players who are part of age group national teams
• national trials
• blind cricket, and sessions with other individuals who are neurodiverse
• festivals

My hope is that this trip has provided both CWB and Cricket Brasil with greater clarity around what may be possible so that future trips are as impactful as they can be. One thing is sure; the future of cricket in Brazil is bright.
A wall at Centro de Trenamento, the home of Cricket Brasil contains the words “Vai dar certo,” which translates to “it will work out.” Visitors are asked to sign the wall as contributors to, and in the belief that, cricket in Brazil will succeed. There was no hesitation from any of us in adding our names to this still relatively young venture that is Cricket Brasil.