SYDNEY - Divyansa Pandey arrives at the playground with her parents on Saturday morning. At the age of three to seven, she spends about an hour and a half practicing. Even the 9-year-old apostle Joshi has the same routine. It is their daily routine to reach the playground half an hour away in the morning and practice as much as they can and show their sportsmanship.
The daily routine of about 100 Nepali children in South Australia is now spent every week practicing cricket and showing the skills they know. Only 20 of them will be selected for the multicultural World Cup organized by the Cricket Association here. Due to which they seem to be playing more carefully than necessary.
The South Australian Cricket Association (SACA) has been organizing the event every year for three years with a plan to bring children from half a dozen countries including Nepal, India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Bangladesh to the state level team. Nepalis are building two teams in the World Cup which is going to be organized this October. U-10 and U-12. For that, continuous practice has been going on for three years.
The Nepali Cricket Association here has worked hard to give this opportunity to Nepali children. Vijay Joshi, president of the Australian-Naples Cricket Association (ANCA), claims that the competition is the first step towards a future in cricket for children with art and passion. "Cricket is very important in Australia and if you excel in this sport, you will have the opportunity to be selected in other competitions in the future." Joshi himself claims that he has been promoting Nepali cricket for the past few years by participating. He is of the opinion that Nepali cricket has been making its mark in Australia in recent times after a long month.
From this practice, which takes place every Saturday, the team will be selected after four weeks and those selected will be trained and made to participate in the competition. Jessica Bryce, an official with the South Australian Cricket Association, said the event was aimed at giving opportunities to talent from other countries as it is a multicultural country. "The aim of the competition is to provide equal opportunities to talented children regardless of their parents from the country and to find a successful cricketer," Bryce told Kantipur.
Australian women's all-rounder Tahila McGrath and the Adelaide Strikers' opening batsman Jake Weatherland arrived at the training ground on Saturday morning to encourage the Nepali children. He spent his time teaching cricket to the children on the field and suggested them to play hard and diligently. Cricketer Weatherland said that it would be great to bring up to two children from the Nepali community in the state level team. He says such programs encourage children to excel in sports.
No comments