For the displaced Syrian children learning the rudiments of a new sport, it’s a time for hopes and dreams
One of cricket’s most charming attributes is its habit of being played in the strangest places: mountain tops, short-lived sandbanks, the bottom of lakes, the South Pole. But perhaps no venue has ever been as improbable as this.
Across south-east Asia, cricket is played in slums and shanty towns all day every day but this was the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut. And the players were not weaned with a makeshift bat in their hand. These were Syrian refugees – aged between seven and 15 – who had never played cricket, watched cricket or heard the word cricket until six months ago, in some cases six days. Yet now, exiled in equally uncrickety Lebanon, they were spending a week immersed in cricket.
Written by Matthew Engel in Beirut
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/mar/09/cricket-beirut-shatila-refugee-camp-children under the title “Delight is a cricket pitch in Beirut’s Shatila refugee camp”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
