In my last blog I discussed how impressively the associate nations performed in the recent T20 World Cup. The gap between the likes of Italy, Scotland, USA, Namibia and the Test playing nations is smaller than ever.

I am writing this having just arrived in Cologne on a stop off on my way to Croatia to meet the Croatian Cricket Federation. Every year I try to identify a European country where cricket is still in the development phase and where I could add a bit of value. While in Germany, I’m meeting the captain of the Cologne women’s cricket team to see if they can play in our Vienna tournament and if they need any other help.

I’m excited to be linking up with teams in Zagreb and Split. The handful of Croat teams are part of the European Cricket Network and have a small club cricket league. Croatia is a full ICC member - the women are 55th in the T20 rankings, above Austria - but are looking to expand their women’s team and develop their juniors. I am hoping they can come to one of our events for Boys or Women & Girls. I enjoy applying what I’ve learned from organising state school cricket and assisting other traditionally non-cricketing countries. As well as encouraging the game amongst the local population, I have strategies to identify cricket-facing ex-pat communities who love the game but have few opportunities to play it. 

This all started in 2010 when my colleague Neil Bunting and I were asked to observe and support cricket in Bonn, Germany. I discovered that because of the large British troop presence in West Germany after the War, there was quite a cricket tradition, and even the odd grass pitch. Even in the capitalist enclave of West Berlin, hundreds of miles inside the communist East German border, NATO troops and ex-pats enjoyed playing cricket. In nearby Denmark, I heard about a cricket community that is a legacy of British railway workers stationed there in the 1850s. I’ve always loved Europe, can speak a bit of French and German and was looking for a way to access potential cricket communities on the continent. I saw that more recent waves of migration (particularly from South Asia) could enable cricket to flourish across Europe. Soon we had coached in Hamburg, then played and coached in Rome.  On one trip we hired a Volkswagen Touareg, and in tribute, needing a quick and appropriate name for a touring team, we became ‘Touregs’ - a banner we still play under! 

I was also coaching in Geneva, Zurich and Basel and organising sections of the Swiss national junior teams. I facilitated tours to the UK so the teams could obtain grass wicket experience - as there are no grass cricket pitches amongst the mountains. I’ve supported the development of ICC-robust playing regulations for their leagues and tournaments - especially regarding inclusion rules. One challenge all associate cricket nations face is, with limited resources, how to avoid just giving the better players all the best opportunities. For an associate to thrive, you need to motivate all abilities and that regularly gets missed both at all levels.

Rapidly, I was coaching all over Europe - working in Brussels with the Belgian women’s team, coaching in North Macedonia and travelling to Estonia for an ICC event. Most quirkily I was asked to go to Chisinau in Moldova to set up the Moldovan Cricket Association, bringing together people who were keen, but whose cricket was not organised or structured. I knew there were many Indian students in the country studying to be doctors and playing informal cricket in their spare time in fields and waste grounds. I helped give them structure, and cross-continent tournaments. After a game in Romania, they became part of the deliciously named Transylvanian Cricket League.

In 2015 Abi Chauhan from Iceland got in touch. He is passionate about the game and wanted me to come over and help out. So, I ended up in a small dark bedsit near the Arctic Circle, negotiating only three daily hours of sunlight, and with the water smelling of the local volcanic sulphur - I really wondered if this was a step too far. And yet the cricket Abi showed me was great. There was a large group of Sri Lankans players based there, as well as some Indians, Pakistanis, a South African and a West Indian guy. And there was an Aussie wicket keeper who worked as a clown and managed the only circus in Iceland. My first job was to give the team a national identity which the people from different countries could connect with beyond their original national affiliation; having achieved this we started entering international tournaments. 

All the matches in Reykjavik were at indoor football grounds, but whilst I was there, we opened an outdoor one - the most northerly in the world. The Prime Minister visited us and actually joined in playing cricket! Matches could go on until nearly midnight in the middle of the year as the sun didn’t go down. So, you can literally play a day night game without the need for floodlights. The downside is that it’s so hard to sleep as it’s constant brightness! And of course, it’s very cold. Even in mid-summer you need to play in three jumpers and a woolly hat especially at nighttime. The pinnacle was playing in an official ICC T20 tournament in Malta. It was very hot - just when our guys had got used to the extreme Icelandic cold. In one game, no one wanted to open the batting because they were so knackered after fielding. We had about 35 players; now they have two outdoor grounds and multiple teams. If they become an associate member, I will be very proud. 

I was also involved in West African cricket: I supported the Ivory Coast in obtaining ICC membership and started to send secondhand equipment out to them and to Liberia.

I had a long standing connection with Emmanuel Pessima who ran a club in Sierra Leone, and in 2019 I was appointed the Head of Cricket for the country’s national teams - this was through Covid, so I had often to coach using live streams and data apps - fixing bowlers actions from my living room in Epsom. Selecting full T20 International squads and teams for the first time was an honour and we made progress during my short time with them and gave debuts to some really exciting young players who are still playing and flourishing now. 

There were some challenges - we found that the women’s team diet was low protein, high carb, and fitness wasn’t pushed so we tried to secure some funding to improve their diet. The outfields were hard and bald so tough to move on, there were some accountability issues, and there wasn’t much money made available to invest in the sport at the time, but we certainly helped move the game’s progress on. 

And so, Croatia tomorrow, flying over Vienna, which has become a central hub for teams across Europe. In order for teams to develop they need to play tournaments with teams from other countries, and we are lucky to be able to operate in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe: Habsburg Vienna is the Home of Cricket.