Lord’s to host Street Child Cricket World Cup final

ISABELLE WESTBURY: There is another World Cup at Lord’s this summer ahead of the main event, one that highlights the plight of children forced to live on the streets

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There is another World Cup at Lord’s this summer ahead of the main event, one that highlights the plight of children forced to live on the streets.

The inaugural Street Child Cricket World Cup sees 10 national teams competing on May 4 and 5, with the finalists at Lord’s on May 7.

Hosts England face Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India North, India South, Mauritius, Nepal, Tanzania, West Indies and Zimbabwe.

The six-a-side teams – boys and girls combined – will use a format called Street20, with 20 legal balls per innings.

People sleeping rough is a common sight in major UK cities. Young people doing so is less frequently seen. It is very easy therefore to assume that children living on the streets is something that happens in other places. It does not. According to the youth homeless charity Centrepoint, “people sleeping rough are vastly outnumbered by those whose homelessness we don’t see”. Their research estimates that last year 103,000 young people in the UK asked their local council for help with homelessness.

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To combat this, the charity stages international sporting events where street children from all over the world participate. The aim is to improve understanding of the issues faced by street children and change the negative perceptions and treatment towards them. To date, these events have mainly been held in conjunction with football.

The charity is determined to widen its impact against a rising threat however. Before the Rio Olympics in 2016, it hosted its first Street Child Games. Now the charity intends to expand once more – into cricket. This is an ambitious plan, not least because while giving young people a voice is a core aim of the charity, it might easily be argued that, in the absence of free-to-air television coverage, many young people in the country will not know much about the sport through which they are trying to achieve this goal. If television will not do it, someone else has to.

Two girls who are intent on changing minds and raising the profile of their cause are Shama, 13, and Bhavani, 15. Both participants in the Magic Bus India Foundation’s activity-based programme, which seeks to relieve children from poverty, they live in transient structures in Mankhurd, a large slum on the outskirts of Mumbai. This summer they will be part of the team representing India South and have no hesitation when asked how important a tournament like the Street Child World Cup might be.

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“This is the first time I will play with boys,” explains Bhavani. “I am representing my community in this tournament and I will come back and share my experience with the other girls.”

Many of those girls do not have an opportunity to play sport, prevented by their parents from playing outside their homes, from wearing the type of clothes conducive to sport, or just running around even. “I am very upset that the other girls, my friends, are not getting the equal opportunities,” adds Shama. “Their parents are not sending my friends to play. It is not fair that the other girls are not being treated equally compared to the way boys are treated.”

“If there is coverage in the newspapers and news channels then the neighbours from my community might recognise me as a role model,” hopes Bhavani. “Then the other parents may have that feeling that my girl child can take part in the [Magic Bus] programme.”

These are young women, like the students marching on Westminster to protest against climate change in February, who haven’t time to wait – in this instance for gender equality. 

The Street Child Cricket World Cup finals day at Lord’s starts at 10.30am, with the first round of matches an hour later, and the final at 1.45pm. It is free to attend but there are a limited number of places - you can register to attend at www.streetchildunited.org

On May 4 and 5 the group stages are on Parker’s Piece in Cambridge, from 10:30am-5pm. Attendance is free.

This article was published in the May edition of The Cricketer - the home of the best cricket analysis and commentary, covering the international, county, women's and amateur game

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