Barcelona citizens voted for a cricket ground with a €1.2m proposal that surprised the authorities.
The city officials had given its citizens an opportunity to vote on a €30m package for sports facilities, ranging from playgrounds to cycle lanes. The people of the Catalan capital had 822 projects to choose from, and a cricket facility got the most votes in a city that breathes football. It was all possible courtesy of a group of young women who had done a campaign for the very cause.
The women are all of Indian and Pakistan origin. The group’s eldest member, 20-year old Hifsa Butt, revealed that the desire for cricket developed three years back thanks to their gym teacher who opened a cricket club.
“It all began three years back in secondary school when the gym teacher asked: ‘Right, we’re gonna start a cricket club out of school hours. Who’s up for it?'”
Butt told The Guardian.
Neither the women nor their Spanish gym teacher had any idea about the rules of the game when the club was started. However, Butt’s father, who had played cricket back in his days, introduced them to the basics of the game.
“He taught us a lot about how to play and then we got started on our own account,”
she said.
An indoor cricket league was organised where they played in a baseball ground in Montjuic. Their aim is to play cricket with a leather ball on a real pitch and build a proper Catalan women’s cricket XI.
“We want to play proper cricket, with 11 players, with a hard ball and not a tennis ball like we use indoors. So now we need a proper cricket pitch with real, not synthetic, grass.
We’re from Pakistan and India, countries that know about cricket, but we also want to spread the news about the game in Spain,”
Butt says.
