Our second full day of working with the teachers in Gulu didn’t get off to the best of starts as we met in the lobby of the hotel at the usual time of 9.30 to be picked up and taken to the stadium, however a medical emergency meant that Phillip our driver only arrived at just before 10 this meant we only got to the stadium at 10.10. The upside to this delay was the sight of around 20 teachers all ready practicing cricket out in the middle of the pitch. Several of the drills that we had worked on the day before could be seen and it was once again a good reminder of the enthusiasm to learn that is a feature of whereever we go in Africa.

Following the model that worked so well in Lira today was all about getting the teachers to work in smaller groups with each taking it in turns to coach a single coaching point on various skills using Rich’s tried and tested method of Explanation, Demonstration, Activity/Observation and finally Feedback/Praise. It is this system that forms the basis of how we get the teachers away from the more traditional African learning by rote into a more English style of coaching.

Both groups have taken to this well with the only issue being the Praise, their reserved nature seems to make this difficult and we spend a lot of time encouraging and cajooling them to be more positive, one of our new ‘rules’ for the coaches is that ‘A fair shot’ doesn’t count as praise.

Midway through the afternoon the dark clouds rolled in and thunder began to rumble in the distance, we carried on as long as possible and our coaching of the straight drive was undertaken against an impressively angry sky and fork lightening. The rain finally hit at 3.30 and so we hurried for cover and called it a day 30 minutes early. The strength of the deluge was such that after only around 15 minutes of rain some of the roads were nearly impassable and credit must go to Phillip for negotiaing his way back to the hotel.

As I sit here now typing some 2 hours later the rain has eased but still not completely stopped, the downside to this could be it may make it impossible to get back to the centre of Gulu to experience the saturday nightlife, rest assured we your intrepid explorers will give it their all to make it into town.

Grace demonstrating wicketkeeping


And the teachers pick it up pretty quickly as you can see.


A reminder of Gulu’s recent past.


I’m pretty sure it took me more than1 hours batting practice before I could drive a ball like this.


With these chaps around you never need to fetch a ball from anywhere.

Rumor has it that in some parts of the Uk a months rain fell in one day, this short clip shows what 15 minutes of rain does to the roads. The beauty here though is about 30 minutes after the rain stop the ground is once again dry and play can commence.