Photo © ECC

With a gap in fixtures and fantastic weather forecast, last weekend was perfect for the Prague Cricket Club to try and promote cricket to the locals. The weather did not disappoint and neither did the attendance, with 26 participants in our Double Wicket Competition, 16 of which (all Czech or Slovak) had never swung a cricket bat in anger.

And the pairings seemed to work well too. The 10 Prague regulars were teamed up with the 10 enthusiastic female beginners and the remaining 6 male beginners paired off with each other. To make it easier for the beginners we used a wind ball for all games and each pair had 5 overs to score as many runs as possible. Runs were deducted for wickets lost (more for the experienced players ñ beware) and wides/no balls were punished with a 2 run penalty and no extra ball. For those not fielding, there was a practice game set up near to the pitch where players could take it in turns to bat on a smaller pitch.

Photo © ECC

The main pairs event was very exciting. Similar scores were made by most of the pairs (the temptation of the wind ball resulting in more wickets than sixes for the Prague cricketers) and in the end, to our delight, an all-Czech beginners team won thanks to some excellent running between the wickets. The winners, Jan Koristka and Ales Dolecek were presented with Prague Cricket Club caps for their efforts (see photo). There were several promising performances, however, the best moment of the afternoon was when another beginner, Erika Stuchla, managed to get a hat trick in her first over.

The combination of the weather, cricket and barbeque resulted in a fun day and, we hope, some more future Czech and Slovak cricketers.