Västerås tales - Its cricket time

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If you have ever dreamt of playing cricket in Scandinavia, I can assure you today that this is one dream which can certainly come true. I had never imagined that people would know what is cricket in Sweden, leave alone playing, and thats the precise reason why I had left most of my gear in Bangalore. But, I was proved wrong. I had just sent out some feelers through my friends around here that I play cricket and that it would be nice if there are people around who are interested in playing the game. Within a few days, I was told by a colleague that people play cricket at a village named Kolsva, around 50kms from Västerås. I started hunting for the details and after a few hours, I could find the link to this club called the Guttsta Wicked Cricket Club (http://www.guttsta.eu/eindex.html). After going through the webpage of this club, I could get more information of the status of cricket in Sweden. To my surprise, Sweden has a governing body for cricket called the Swedish Cricket Federation (http://www.swedishcricket.se/) and they are trying to promote cricket in Sweden. I could find that the federation organizes the Swedish National League and also is planning to participate in some "international" tournaments. It was for the first time that I could see some of the European countries in the cricket list like Bulgaria, Greece, Estonia, Czech Republic, Turkey, Denmark, Finland and Norway. This year, 13 clubs are playing the Swedish League and I could see that most of the club players are actually from ICC (International Cricket Council) full member countries and mainly from India, Australia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and England. Still, I could find that quite a few clubs have "desi" Swedish players too and that is a very good sign. Well, many details are available on the Swedish Cricket Federation webpage.



Let me now come back to my story. I could find from the Guttsta Club webpage that there were quite a few Indians in the team. I called one of the folks and I was happy to know that one of the members actually works in the same organization as mine. I got in touch with him and I came to know that there was a practice match on 28th June... I was thrilled to the core. The game was to be held in the home ground of the club at Kolsva village. I don't drive and I found that it was going to be a pain to reach the ground. The person whom I had contacted agreed to take me along with him in the car. It was tough last week waiting for the Sunday to arrive and the weather forecast was terrific. Sunday morning, my friend picked me up from near my house, then we went to the railway station to pick up another of our players who was coming in from Stockholm by train to play this match (Stockholm is around an hour by train). My friend's son also plays and he is an emerging cricketer and he was also going to play. We reached the ground well in time for the match which was planned to start at 11:00AM. I got introduced to the other team members and also the main force behind the club, Hasse.. He is an elderly gentleman and his enthusiasm for the game was something I am very proud of. Our opponents were a club from Uppsala and the players were mainly students studying at Uppsala University. It was a 30 over match.

The first thing which strikes you when you reach the ground is the ground itself. Can you imagine a lush green turf ground in Sweden with lush green surroundings. This is sort of a privilege for me since we rarely used to get a chance to play on a turf ground in Bangalore. This ground was solely maintained by Hasse and I am truly amazed by his love for the game. This ground can be probably termed as the best ground up towards the poles. Its just green and green all around. The club boasts of a good stock of cricket gear too and I immediately decided to become a member. It was scorching hot on Sunday when we were playing the game. The game turned out to be a very good one for our team and although we lost by a good margin, we played as a team together. It was so nice to see that the love of the game has got together several people from different nationalities and they are now trying to popularize the game in Sweden. The club is going to organize a tournament too in July when one of the participating teams would be a club from England.

This was a nice experience for me and I am for sure will continue to play. Playing time here is only during the 5 months of summer and one can really enjoy the game during this period. Hail Swedish cricket !

Till the next match, its Adjö from Santanu.