Spoor Noord’s cricket cages will be a major asset for a booming sport: “An important integration for young Afghans” (Antwerp)

Park Spoor Noord will have a cricket training ground in the form of four consecutive training cages, each 28 meters long and fully fenced. Batters can land their tightest shots without hurting or disturbing other park visitors. Construction starts next week. The new infrastructure, a first for a public park, will open next month. “It is worth celebrating. We hope that this will allow even more young people to go to the real clubs, ”says Abdulrashid Karim Dostikhel, more or less the guru of cricket at Spoor Noord.

Cricket fans have been having fun on the large lawn near Visestraat for years. They often bring love for this “second biggest sport in the world” from their country of origin: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan or India. The training cages that an entrepreneur from Essen will now build give cricket a more official touch, which may also appeal to park walkers. Just to be clear: Spoor Noord won’t get a full-fledged ‘pitch’, you would need the whole park for that: an official match is usually played in an area the equivalent of 2.5 football pitches.

Small tournaments have already taken place on Spoor Noord. The inventor of it, also a player in our national team and a solid holder of the national champion Beveren Cricket Club, is Abdulrashid Karim Dostikhel (30 years old). When the weather is nice – because cricket is a real summer sport – you find it on the “field” almost every day. “As part of the Antwerp citizens’ budget, in 2017 I submitted a project that gives young people the opportunity to integrate through this sport, with the help of a few tournaments and events. Be active, teach social behavior, take responsibility. That’s what it’s all about,” says Abdulrashid, who works for Fedasil as a group supervisor.

The non-profit organization Kras helped ensure he could reach young people and get the project started. It is no coincidence that the many Afghan refugees are its target group, supplemented by the people who live in the vast surroundings of the park. “They sometimes advance to the big teams in our country, but that’s definitely not the most important thing.”

Commonwealth

Cricket, which is like flat baseball for dummies and has a whole bible of rules, is big in England, Australia and New Zealand. But it is really a matter of state in countries like India, Pakistan or Afghanistan. The United Kingdom spread the sport throughout the Commonwealth, but curiously Flemish weavers brought the sport to England in the late Middle Ages. Recent historical research has shown this. So it can be said that with this investment – the district is spending 93,000 euros on these batting cages – cricket is somehow ‘coming home’.

At the competitive level, Belgium has 2,500 officially affiliated players, in different variants of cricket, and distributed among eighteen clubs. Antwerp has two grounds in their own right: that of the Antwerp Cricket Club (a club that has existed since 1892 and formerly played at the Wilrijkse Pleinen) at the Nachtegalenpark, and that of the Antwerp Indian Cricket Club at the Jaintempel in Wilrijk. “I also secretly dream of a site in its own right in the north. I see a place for it on Slachthuislaan, in the newly developed urban district around the Ring,” Abdulrashid looks to the future. He really wants to grow cricket with us, like in the rest of the world.

But first the training grounds on the Visestraat. They will be located where the volleyball court is currently located. The current volleyball court is moving and will be located between the basketball court and the cages. The location of the basketball court will remain the same. “We have the neighborhood buses and sports facilities. Spark is also nearby,” says district alderman Charlie Van Leuffel (N-VA), who helped kick off construction. “We are therefore confident that the commissioning will go smoothly. The idea was already there during the previous legislature, but today we can really answer the question of the actors and local residents. I’m also curious about the opening and would love to see the players themselves in action. Let’s hope the weather isn’t too bad, as it might delay construction a bit.