Cricket in Bangladesh: bringing a smile to people’s faces

Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world. About the size of England and Wales, its population is estimated at around 150 million people. More than half of these are living on an average of about £1.25 a day. Some days they have nothing. Bangladesh is bearing the brunt of climate change impacts already: in a normal year, about one-quarter of the country is flooded. Over 90 per cent is lower than 5m above sea level. In a bad year, flooding can affect 60 per cent of the country – millions of people. The bad years are getting more frequent, and more severe. In 2007, Bangladesh suffered from two massive floods in August and October, then a massive cyclone as bad as Hurricane Katrina in November. Most of the damage has been cleaned up, homes repaired or replaced, and people are getting on with their lives in conditions we would consider nasty, brutish and miserable.

Bangladeshis are passionate about their language – it was what they fought a hard independence war for only a generation ago. Bangla New Year is celebrated every April with colourful dancing, moving songs and poems, and great food. Rice is the mainstay of the diet for the poor. Curries and sauces for the better off, and for special occasions.
We enjoy Bangladeshi curries all over the UK. Most “Indian” restaurants are run by Brit Banglas – including the Delhi Durbar in Twickenham, favoured by many RCC stalwarts.

Cricket is another passion. It is played on any strip of ground, even on main roads when the traffic is light. Your correspondent enjoyed a short game on one of the main highways of Dhaka on election day (29 December), in between stints observing the voting. The young lads were delighted to give the big fat foreigner a drubbing, with bat and ball. In urban slums and poor rural areas, young boys (no girls, at least none observed as yet) will use sticks of wood and cloth-eared tennis balls wrapped in layers of tape to fashion a game in narrow alleys or on well-trodden paths between fields of crops and what look like lean-to shacks but are in fact homes to so many.

How we can make a small difference?

For about £10, one can buy a reasonable colt’s bat and a box of tennis-cricket balls. In recent months, I have got into the practice of taking a bat and some balls when he goes on field visits to poor urban or rural areas. My son Sean, an RCC colt, went on one of these trips. The beaming smiles these modest gifts generate are truly uplifting; the expressions of thanks for taking a few minutes to have a knock up with the local kids are simply humbling. I will probably get half a dozen chances a year to make such donations, so clearly they are not going to transform grassroots cricket in Bangladesh. But they are a valued symbol of friendship. And mycolleagues can help spread the donations rather further.

More substantively, we can support organised cricket through sponsorship of training camps and provision of surplus kit. Proceeds from the Richmond Rangers 2008 Tour Shirts (about £300) supported a Training Camp for the Bangladesh Deaf Cricket Association, eventually held in January. I presented the certificate and prizes at the end, and was even allowed to have a bat in the final couple of overs. The Deaf Cricket Association will be participating in the Asia Deaf Cricket Cup in Pakistan, in April; and the Deaf Cricket World Cup in New Zealand in the autumn. They are a great bunch of guys and worthy of further support.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board organises a schools competition every year. This involves almost 500 schools across the country, and is sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank. We would like to identify a school or cluster of schools in Dhaka with whom RCC can establish a link, including exchanging scores, facts, figures and photos. Chris is approaching the BCB for advice on how we could best support this competition.

To raise money for this charitable cause, we are seeking donations via Gift Aid. Information about how you can do this will follow.

We are also selling lightweight Richmond blazers, made in Bangladesh, for £40 each. The blazers were made pro bono by a major supplier to UK retailers, who is regularly assessed to ensure compliance with labour rights and working conditions. The manufacturer is delighted to be supporting Richmond CC, in return for some photos of RCC stars in striped attire. I have made a start, assisted in this photo by Christy Turlington Burns, the former supermodel who now acts as an ambassador for the White Ribbon Alliance for safer motherhood and who visited Bangladesh earlier this year. She graciously agreed to model the Richmond Stripey and help us raise funds to support poor kids play cricket and have a bit of fun.