The Lord’s Game

Today’s blog brought to you by Deborah
Today’s almighty highlight was indeed playing “the lord’s game ” at the centre communitairre del’enfance orphelinat international with 40 orphan children ranging from 1 year old to 21 years old, 2 teachers and 3 nuns. The smiles from the sheer fun of playing the game, batting and fielding on a narrow ground beside a motorway didn’t surprise me as this has been the experience at all the schools and the impromptu games with locals – but the overwhelming joy and enthusiasm – the noise! from such a group many who share rooms with up to 12 others was humbling. Our games always include the ABCT messages so it was with some relief that the nuns shouted along with the children the C word – Condom !
It was a day to meet our Heroes too – the last CWB trip discovered Mary – the KP of Cameroon – who on her first time at the crease executed a natural reverse sweep. Many of you know this is one of my cricketing ambitions to play the reverse sweep so it was wonderful for her to take us through her technique and share her experiences of the positive impact of having the children play sports and enjoy the cricket sessions at the orphanage . My view on nun’s has changed for the good.

While we were lucky enough to spend time with Mary we were not as lucky with our plans to visit the great man himself – well for football fans everywhere and especially in Africa he is the great Roger Milla or Roger Miller to others – either way you spell it – to us he is known also one of the benefactors of the orphanage – so now we too claim him for cricket without boundaries! Sadly however the great man was not in the office – so our hope is to drop in next Saturday to say hello and hold Lee back from fainting with the delight at meeting a football school boy hero or worse doing the roger milla World Cup goal scoring dance ! If you don’t know it YouTube it – it was first of its kind!

The day was special for another reason too as it was our Festival Day where we invite the schools we have coached during the week to join us for some inter school fun matches. Luke and I from CWB along with our newly trained cricket coaches from the schools Divine,Abu and Charlotte ran the match between Mevick school v wisdom school. It was a really close game and after 2 innings ayes over about 90 minutes Wisdom came out on top with a total of 159 runs to Mevick’s 150. All the CWB coaches were absolutely impressed by the development of the players over the week. Richard noted from his festival game that many of the girls were really aware of moving the field with their batting- impressive start! For me even better was seeing the kids coach each other on remembering the correct positions for batting, fielding and encouraging their teammates – very cricket. While we celebrated the festival by all having a nice lolly from local ice cream man – who couldn’t believe his luck when Lee went and bought 200 ice lollies – I asked the kids about how they found the awareness messaging on HIV while learning and playing cricket . The answers were overwhelmingly positive. Seems having fun and being outside a classroom has an impact on the enjoyment in learning and we hope in living !
The power the hope and the glory amen and howzat .