A game for everyone

The Elwood Cricket Club, like every cricket club in Melbourne, spends the cold dark winter months planning for the season ahead.

This winter was no different; meeting after meeting feverishly establishing the building blocks for a season that was to follow a watershed year of sorts — a season in which we collected two senior premierships for the City of Moorabbin Cricket Association (now the South East Cricket Association) — breaking a 10-year drought.

It was on the eve of one of these meetings that a senior player at our club, Rick Yeatman, came to us with a proposal that, at the time seemed fanciful, but now in November, just 10 weeks into the season proper, it’s a proposal that has had a remarkable impact on our cricket club.

Rick, through his day job as a psychiatrist, has had a lot to do with asylum seekers.

He regularly flies to Christmas Island off the Western Australian coast to assist in recent arrivals who have experienced often traumatic voyages by sea.

Through his work there he has been in regular contact with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and it was through this organisation that an idea was floated to form a cricket team made of asylum seekers who — due to Australian laws restricting paid work for people on bridging visas and community detention — had a lot of free time without a lot to do, nor necessarily a network to fill that void.

So Rick approached our club — his club — to see if we would support a cricket side consisting of asylum seekers.

Rick firstly had to see if there was any interest in this project among the many Pakistanis, Afghanis, Sri Lankans and many other cricket-mad people who are trying to call Australia home.

Unsurprisingly there was — and the club decided to back Rick’s project and make a newly-formed 6th XI the “home” of Rick and his men.

Thanks to the generosity and assistance of Cricket Victoria — via their “Harmony In Cricket” programme, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, the City Of Port Phillip Council and myriad private supporters of our programme, we were able to sponsor seven or eight asylum seekers — and by sponsorship I mean we covered their registration, decked them out with club merchandise and made sure they had adequate equipment to play cricket.

The smiles of the boys when they were fully clad in Elwood playing gear for the first time was a reward that cannot be measured.

So the boys took to the field.

And wow, can they play!

Competing in I Grade, our 6th XI remains third on the ladder, winning three games and losing one.

There has been some stirring individual performances and some even greater impressive team efforts.

The 6ths are a motley crew of sorts — made up of a combination of asylum seekers, young players, their fathers, some juniors and senior players of the club — but they have quickly become a source of great pride for our cricket club and, we believe, deserving of admiration from those outside the four walls of the ECC.

This round, round five, has seen two of the boys promoted to the Fourth XI — a sign not of only their talents but also of a natural integration at play that represents what is possible in the greater society in which the club exists.

One of the boys has played in our 1st XI — whom play in the highest grade in our competition — since round one.

He is not only universally loved but he is also the highest wicket taker for our side this season in a team that sits third on the ladder.

Opportunity is a wonderful thing.

Once again, we thank everyone involved who have helped and assisted to get this program off the ground.

Image supplied by Paul Marcolin.