Whilst the scheduling of football in Africa leaves a lot to be desired with frequent venue and timing changes, cricket is far more reliable. If a game is listed as taking place then it generally does unless, as everywhere, the weather intervenes.
With that in mind I was pleased to see that our stay in Windhoek coincided with a fifty over provincial game between Namibia and the South African side, Easterns. It’s a little odd to see a country competing with regional sides but I suppose it’s similar to Scotland taking part in the one day competitions against the English counties.
As we left our hotel we spotted a couple of Himba kids in the car park. It seems that the market where their mothers flash their jugs is a seven days a week affair. I’d seen the kids in the shopping centre the previous day, wandering around barefoot and wearing nothing more than a string around the waist. I dare say at the ages of three or four they wouldn’t be too bothered about it, but I suspect that they might become a little more self-conscious as they got older.
Himba kids.
The Wanderers stadium was easy enough to find and after having our car searched we made our way in and parked just behind the scoreboard. I looked the place up on the internet and an England XI had played a couple of one day games against Namibia there in 2004. The first of them being Kevin Pieterson‘s debut for an English representative side.
Play should have started at half past nine, but whilst the players were all milling around, the game had yet to begin. The only action was provided by a kid in a Barcelona away strip using a cricket net as a football goal. Those shirts get everywhere.
Barca kid.
Jen and I took seats in the shade in front of a bar. As play started we were joined by two couples, each consisting of a woman reading a magazine and a man compiling his own scorecard. One of the fellas got so infuriated by the inaccuracy of the scoreboard that he left his seat and altered it himself.
There was also a woman sat by herself with an early morning lager. “I love cricket” she told us as she lit another Chesterfield.
View from our seats.
She wasn’t the only one starting early as there were a handful of people in the bar watching a T20 game on the telly. I imagine the main benefit of being indoors was the air-conditioning.
We’d been to an Easterns game a couple of weeks earlier and in an equally empty venue had sat near to their wicketkeeper‘s Mam. She wasn’t there for this game but I still kept an eye out for her boy, hoping that he’d do okay.
View from the other side.
We couldn’t stay all day as we had a football game with a noon kick-off to get to, but we watched the first twenty overs or so, Namibia getting to around seventy for two by the time we left them to it.
Tags: Easterns, Namibia cricket, wanderers, windhoek
Trail of the Lion King 
March 28, 2015 at 1:20 pm |
Just saying hello. You know, your blog’s looked a little thin on the scoreboard flicks lately… I was reminded of this when watching footage of the second tier of Japan’s American football league on YouTube… Interestingly, the ground seemed to have an almost baseball-influenced scoreboard, with a line score indicating each individual quarter, which is unusual for other American sports like football and basketball, which usually just have the HOME: x – GUEST: y setup on either side of the game clock and number of time-outs remaining, etc. (I’m well aware this makes me a giant fucking anorak, which is a hilariously awesome English word I find depressingly apt.)
Anyway, as the Spanish Division de Honor kicks off today, I was reading Spanish Sporting Stuff and it occurs to me that it might be amusing if, the next time you’re in Catalonia, you catch a baseball match some weekend.
Or not, you know. Up to you.
Seriously, though,
been a bit football-heavy, and also I’ve been busier, which is why I’ve had much less to stay, but I still come by and love reading. Thanks.
March 31, 2015 at 6:14 pm |
Hi Eric, great to see that you are still looking in. I was at a cricket match at the weekend and when I catch up with the posts that will have the a scoreboard shot in it. It’s the end of the South African cricket season though so unless I get to a game in England in May that might be it for a while.
I had no idea that there was a baseball league in Spain but I’ve looked it up and see there are three teams in or around Barcelona. I’m there for three nights in May and so will try and find out the fixtures with a view to getting to one of the games. I’m intrigued to see how different it will be to those in the US or Asia. Thanks for the info.