A First Cricket Experience

This Sunday was the finale of an 8-day tournament called Condom Cricket that an organization called Wake-Up Pune sponsors every year.  Wake-Up Pune is a collaboration of about 10 different NGO’s from all around Pune that all work with HIV in some form.  Condom Cricket is an event that they sponsor every year  that acts as an outreach tool for high school and college age kids.  The idea is (for those of you that know how cricket is played)  that the ball is HIV, the wickets are your health, the bat is a condom, the batters are “you” and “me”, and the outfielders are different opportunistic infections.  So “you” and “me” use the condom (the bat) to protect our health (the wickets).  There are signs all around the field that make reference to cricket as well as safe sex such as “You wouldn’t face Brent Lee without a helmet, why would you have sex without a condom?”  Its basically a way to get the idea of condoms out to younger people and since EVERYONE here plays cricket it seems like a perfect match.

Well Bub and I were able to make our debut in the world of cricket at this Condom Cricket tournament.  The winner of the tournament played a short (5 over) friendly game against the hodge-podge Wake-Up Pune team, made up largely of volunteers from around Pune and two very white Americans whose closest experience to cricket is baseball.  

It may look like I’ve actually hit the ball in the second picture but don’t be fooled, I’ve just swung too early and the ball passes right past me.

We were glad that we could help out with the event as our game didn’t really count for anything and they were wanting for volunteers to play.  Sara was really wishing that she could have played too, as she has a better handle on cricket than either of us, but her trip to the hospital the day before for a cyst removal put her on the DL.  She was able to take all the great pictures that we have of the match though.

 

Since I’m on the subject, I feel the need to impress upon you just how popular cricket is here.  Almost anywhere in the neighborhood that there is an open space available there will be kids playing cricket using anything from a metal folding chair, plywood or even a tire for a wicket.  In the more open fields in town there is usually a more organized game going on among older kids and young adults.  If all the enthusiasm about football, basketball and baseball in America were combined into one sport it might match that for cricket here in India.