What a day. We played the Cameroon national side this afternoon in a 15 over game, the Cameroon side coming out resounding winners, making a healthy 144, with the CWB side making a disappointing total of 45. The Cameroon batting featured strong leg side scoring, while the bowling & fielding was athletic, as they held some good catches, and displayed good ground fielding skills. The CWB performance left something to be desired, but the team played with great spirit, and, as the Cameroonian Minister for Culture said in his remarks before the game, cricket was ultimately the winner.
The game highlighted that while it’s still early days in the development of cricket in Cameroon, the early signs are promising. The team and staff are hugely committed, working with commitment and energy to develop their skills and public awareness of the game, on top of their day jobs. The amount of untapped talent here in Cameroon is huge. The CWB team has been hugely impressed by the skill of many of the school kids here, who despite not playing cricket before, have displayed enormous talent for the game and who could, with the right coaching and resources, develop into seriously good players. Perhaps most encouragingly, many of the best prospects are girls, making the future for Women’s Cricket in Cameroon especially bright. As my teammate Kirsty Heath mentioned in her recent blog celebrating International Women’s Day, girls in the schools we’ve visited can be initially hesitant when playing for the first time, but soon display a keen competitive edge.
On the other hand, our game today also undermined the challenges facing the game. Resources are in short supply, administrative structures still nascent and match play is hard to come by for many of the players. However, it is hard not to be optimistic given the abundance of talent and enthusiasm we’ve seen on the tour so far. We travel to Buea, in Cameroon’s west coast, early tomorrow for a week of coaching in schools there. If week one is anything to go by, we should expect to be impressed.