Sports day at Shanghai Cricket Hope School

The Shanghai Cricket Hope School in Sichuan continues to grow from strength to strength and after the efforts this week of some cricketers from Shanghai and Japan it should soon have the best cricket team in Sichuan.

For this visit, Alex Naoki Miyaji, the CEO of Japan Cricket Association (JCA), made the grueling four day round trip from Tokyo to Shi Pan village. In Chengdu he hooked up with three Shanghai based teammates from the White Knights, a cricket team established just over two years ago with the sole purpose of supporting cricket related charitable causes. JCA together with Shanghai based Kooka Pies generously donated all the children’s cricket equipment that was squeezed into our minivan along with other sporting equipment and stationary donated by the local Coca‐Cola Bottler.
Since my last visit to the school in April, the nearby ancient walled small town of Zhou Hua has been beautifully restored after being badly damaged in the Earthquake, thus enabling us to lodge in a guest house within the town walls. With very few tourists making it this far out of Chengdu, Zhou Hua provides a peacefully serene stopover as well as at least one hidden gastronomical treasure. On the evening of our arrival, dinner was arranged by local Youth League officials in a private courtyard residence where dish after dish represented the best flavouring and fragrances that Sichuan has to offer. Above the full moon provided most of the light and outside the cool mountain air was complimented by complete silence. It was idyllic and a welcome contrast to both Shanghai and Tokyo.
Prior to departing for the school early the next morning, we put down a set of stumps underneath the ornate East Gate to the town for an impromptu “net session”. After a few top edged blows into street side stalls it was back to the minivan for the final bone jarring ride along the single dirt track road to Shi Pan.
The greeting I received when I opened the school six months ago will live with me forever. The reception afforded to us by the village this visit somehow managed to trump the previous one. Yet again all the school children lined the road and yet again they sang greetings to us. However this time there was a brigade of children wearing Shanghai Bashers Cricket Club caps and chanting “Bashers! Bashers!”  As we approached, they  picked up flags, formed a procession and led us in formation up the hill to the school entrance. For the Bashers contingent in the White Knights it was a special moment.
The formalities began with an exchange of gifts firstly from the School to Coca‐Cola and Shanghai Cricket Club and then from us to all the children with the “Mini” Bashers deployed by Headmaster Yang to assist in  handing out the gifts to their classmates. We also presented them with a simple and permanent display explaining what cricket is all about if such a thing is possible. Representatives of each Grade presented us with paintings and then the “Mini” Bashers presented us with beautiful cards containing extremely personal accounts of how our involvement with their school had impacted them.
The school itself has been further developed since I last visited. Two additional classrooms, a library and a new canteen have been added. In addition, the playground area is now finished and two new freestanding basketball nets have been added. More good news was to follow when Paul Howard announced he had secured support from Kraft Foods to help with the provision of canteen equipment. Then it was down to the business of the day. Cricket practice! It quickly became clear that North East Sichuan is going to be a Twenty20 hotbed as balls were dispatched to all corners of the playground by children barely taller than the bats they were yielding. A semblance of order was brought to proceedings by a couple of Grade 4 girls who proved to be natural bowlers and for a spell it least put the brash boys in their place. The teachers and Youth League officials watching from the sidelines could contain their excitement no  longer and joined in…. five minutes later they were coaching bowling. Children without a bat or a ball decided that their new basketballs and footballs offered viable alternatives and very soon we had 170 kids all engaged in some form of sport simultaneously.
Before departing we were asked to plant four more ceremonial trees in honour of Shanghai Cricket, Japan Cricket, Bashers CC and Coca-Cola. The children then assembled to bid an emotional farewell after which we were led hand in hand back down to our vehicle by the Bashers. In many ways this trip gripped the emotions on both sides more than my initial visit as it is becoming increasingly apparent the positive impact we are having not only as the school facilities develop but also as we slowly develop a bond with the village and its residents.
No trip to rural China would be complete without reference to a transportation mishap. Our major mishap involved getting stuck in a three hour motionless traffic jam in the middle of the mountains. At times like that you  need to call on  experience and so it was the wise old head of Tony Finocchiaro who decided that we should walk 3km to the nearest junction in search of cold beers. Thus we set off along a highway that cuts through a mountain range of 4000m plus peaks under a rare clear late afternoon Sichuan autumn sky and invigorated by the experiences of several hours earlier. All the trucks had cut their engines and so eerily quiet was the highway we could hear the chatter amongst farmers a couple of hundred metres away echoing up the valley…. except  when we walked passed truckloads of pigs on their final journey. Time stood still and we took time out to reflect that in reality our work has only just started if we are ever going to be able to provide the children of Shi Pan village with anything like the educational and sporting opportunities we all enjoyed as children. We will be back in the Spring.