The national cricket team is an example of multiracial coexistence and sporting development. The growth experienced by this sport in a country where the practice is not easy was seen after winning the bronze medal at the 2022 European Championships in Malaga. Although it is on the horizon, due to the lack of fields and sponsors Olympic Games. Discipline said hello and goodbye in Paris in 1900 and wants to return to Los Angeles in 2028.
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“The team consists of Spanish players whose parents are Spanish, Spanish players whose father is Spanish and whose mother is English or vice versa, other children of Pakistanis, Indians, South Africans… The coexistence is perfect, because everyone has talents. Cricket España Group “He has the same passion and defends the same color, the red of his shirt,” its president Juan Carlos Rodríguez Martínez explains to EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA of the Prensa Ibérica group.
English is the instrumental language in this diverse locker room. Rodríguez Martínez insists: “It is also the language of sport.”A very interesting factor for boys and girls who decide to start playing cricketBecause they grow up in an environment where they can learn English as well as the benefits of doing sports.” The youngster aims to reach the final by following in the footsteps of a team that eliminated Ireland in the European Championship, where they faced ambition.
“Our goal was always to win the tournament. We even beat the champion and the runner-up in the qualifying rounds. On the last day we had to beat England to get to the final against the Netherlands. We were unlucky because one move changed the fate of the matchHe is the head of a sport played with a racket and ball on a normally oval court with a diameter of about 140 to 150 meters, he says.
British colonies
“This is an example of integration at every level. We can easily say that there are players from the countries listed above in all teams in the world. We must not forget that cricket is a sport founded by the British and world powers as well as India and Pakistan. It is spreading in many Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica and Canada.” says Jaime González Molina, Director of Operations at Cricket Spain.
Certainly, the flow of immigration to states such as Spain allowed cricket to spread to other latitudes. “Its origins date back to 1975, when the Madrid Cricket Club was founded. Thanks to a group of Brits living in Spain who want to continue playing their favorite sport away from their homeland.”, explains the president of the Spanish team. In later years, the British colonies Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, Andalusia, the Basque Country, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands established their own teams.
“In 2000, a group of Spaniards and Britons founded the Spanish Cricket Association, which was created to support and organize competitions for clubs that were being established,” explains Rodríguez Martínez. The first national team was established in the same year. “He will then compete internationally at the European Indoor Cricket Championships in Valencia.” In the next edition of this tournament, the national team won the bronze medal.
Abbreviated methods
Since then the team has participated in international competitions and moved up the European rankings.It ranks 16thIn the World Cup, it ranks 36th among a total of 84 countries in the T20 game mode. This is one of two variations of shorthand cricket. The other is T10, where Spain won the bronze medal at the European Championships in Malaga.
What do these namings mean? “It shows how many overs are played in each match. ‘Upper’ is six steps. Therefore in a T10 duel each team has 60 shots to knock the bats out and the match takes place in 90 minutes. There are 120 pitches in a T20,” explains Cricket Spain Chief Operating Officer.
González Molina evaluates these variants compared to the traditional one, where matches last several days: “The present and future of cricket in Spain; “It is developing rapidly and extraordinarily.”. But both cricket representatives agree that the explosion of the discipline in Spain has to do with its involvement as a partner in the world’s governing body, the International Cricket Council.
Similarly, since 2018, Cricket Spain has been integrated into the European Cricket Network, being “responsible for organizing club and national team championships”. A. partner “It’s so powerful because it broadcasts events to millions of viewers around the world.”
lack of space
One of the arguments they put on the table when looking for sponsors is definitely large audiences. “Cricket has great potential both in sporting and touristic terms. For example, 21 teams participated in the European Championship held in Cártama (Malaga) and was broadcast to 40 million people a day. “To this we must add 450 hosted players that provide significant benefits,” they insist.
Despite progress, cricket in Spain is far from capitalizing on these potentials. “The real problem is the lack of fields. The dimensions are larger than a football field. In order for this to be implemented seriously and for teams from England to engage in sports tourism, The diameter of the field must be between 140 and 160 meters. When these surfaces are not available, the quickest thing to do is to share a baseball field,” explains the Spanish institution.
But they see progress and note that more and more municipalities are interested in the issue. The project that received the most votes in Barcelona’s 2021 participatory budgets was the cricket field. In Madrid, the local club managed to gain a place to play sports after a 20-year struggle. They say they don’t feel helpless from Cricket Spain, “because that happens if once you contact the institutions they don’t pay attention to you, but that’s not the case right now.”
“Our choice”
But they argue cricket cannot depend on transfers “and so the authorities have a huge opportunity to invest in the sport, beyond great sporting results.” As the second most practiced and followed sport in the world, it provides benefits at the tourist level.”. A method in which Spain managed to place its flag among traditional banners, benefiting from the performance of a generation that trained a team from scratch.
“Representing your country is one of the best things that can happen to you. Listening to the National Anthem will give you a great adrenaline rush. The feeling is greater when it comes to the cricket team,” says Juan Carlos Rodríguez Martínez, president of the Spanish Cricket Association.
“Because when we say we support the team at a football or basketball game, we use the plural form of ‘we’ or ‘our team’. But when it comes to the national cricket team, we say this with all the laws. We created this team from scratch. That is why pride is so great,” says one resident of the Tower of Babel, who has reached heaven without assistance and whose next height may be the Olympics.
How to play cricket?
“It’s actually not any harder than other sports. For a layman I would say that cricket is a sport played with a racquet and ball on a field with a ‘carpet’ in the middle with two bases at each end.
Where Two batsmen from team A enter the field to try to score as many runs (‘runs’) as possiblethrowing the ball as far as possible to score individual points (when two batters pass each other and reach each base safely), four points for a single hit by throwing the ball out of the infield but bouncing before leaving, and a strike if the ball leaves the infield without bouncing in.
Team B’s field 11 players try to eliminate team A’s batsmen as quickly as possible so that they do not score too many points. They may do this by attempting to touch the ‘stumps’ of the three vertical bars, knocking down one of the two pieces standing on them (the “bail”), or by catching the ball in the air after it has been hit by team B. Team A will score a certain number of points and Team B will need to bat next to beat that score.”.