The idea of playing two-day cricket matches is something new
to the 180-odd boys who are at St David’s Marist for the Fasken Time cricket
festival. I overheard two of the coaches, both ex-players, discussing how these
players won’t get to experience it again, unless they get to the semi-pro level
of the game.
Cricket is unique among team games because in no other one do
you get to sit around with your team mates for such extended periods, watching
the action. This two-day format has increased that time period, it’s a longer opportunity
to bond, and speak the trash that cricketers do.
And education, in the end, is all about setting up
situations in which young people can learn lessons. The best educators are
there, guiding the conversation – lightly – but letting their charges learn for
themselves.
That’s cricket, isn’t it? I walked around the grounds at St
David’s on Thursday – and you don’t realise how big the Inanda campus is until
you tramp from one end of it to the other – and saw at every field the batting
teams sitting together in a shady place, ribbing each other, shouting encouragement
at the batsmen out there and generally soaking up the socalisation lessons that
the game teaches. And sitting with them, slightly to the side, were the coaches,
smiling to themselves, butting in from time to time, and quietly teaching life
lessons in a unique way.
That’s why it’s worthwhile going to the trouble and expense
of setting up an event like this one. As much as learning the cricketing skills
and strategy that the longer game teaches, the boys spend hours together
learning from each other, and from the men who are with them who, remember, believe
it’s important to give up so much of their time to coach them.
The St David’s headmaster, Mike Thiel, at the festival opening
breakfast on Thursday, bemoaned the fact that football has appropriated the
name “the beautiful game”, he suggested that cricket should call itself “the
great game”. He’s not far wrong.
Real cricket!
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