SJS Students Make History by Competing in the Inaugural Inter-schools Cricket Tournament
On Saturday 4th, March eight young St. Julian's School cricketers made history by competing in the inaugural inter-schools cricket tournament at Escola Carlos Paredes in Odivelas. Our players, several of whom had never played a game of cricket before in their lives, did very well to pick up two wins and finish in 3rd place out of five teams.
Outside of the splendid confines of the Oporto Cricket and Lawn Tennis Club and sporadic teams raised from within the expatriate British community to take on visiting ships belonging to their various Majesties, it would be fair to describe cricket in Portugal, really, since time immemorial, as an especially freakish unicorn wandering a particularly parched cricketing desert.
The fact that there is now a thriving 17-team senior cricket league, producing a national team that has climbed to the giddy heights of 44th in the world rankings, owes much to the visionary drive of Dr Sandy Buccimazza, paediatrician to generations of St. Julian's students, and his son and former St. Julian's pupil, Paulo. Geography has also played its part, with immigration from the Indian sub-continent and, more recently, refugees from Afghanistan, providing most of the players and all of the passion for the game for which that region is famous.
So it was that our first taste of the joys of inter-school cricket competition was accompanied by a delightful soundtrack of enthusiasm in Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, Pashto, Portuguese and English. Fortunately, the common language was cricket, and the games were played competitively but in a wonderful spirit of fellowship and camaraderie.
Although the opposition teams were quite a bit older and vastly more experienced in matters of bat and ball, our pioneer cricketers gave an excellent account of themselves and are all looking forward to hosting the next inter-school encounter at St. Julian's in the summer term.
Congratulations are due to all of our players: the captain Jimmy "Jimbo" Frost; the winner of the tournament's best all-rounder prize Otto "Ottoman" Nyberg; the indomitably positive Sullivan "Squaddie" Lynes, Felix "FiFi" and Harry "Boom Boom" de Groot; the purveyor of mystery spin Sian "Oz" Hersey; the pristine whites-cladded William "Nails" Naylor; and the bowler of the tournament's only maiden over and smasher of sixes for fun, Griffin "Grifter" Oldfield.
Thanks are also due to Mr Freddie "Fredo" Douglas for his superb coaching, impeccably neat score-sheet keeping and provision of seemingly endless essential supplies of wonderfully sweet and restorative oranges.
Simon Mount
Secondary Geography Teacher and Cricket Coach
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