History and development of cricket in Portugal
Origin of cricket in Portugal
When we consider about the history of cricket in Portugal, it goes way back to the days when there was Peninsular War and when the Wellington's British troops were encamped in Lisbon.
As a matter of fact there has been an annual fixture between sides from Oporto and Lisbon, as they usually play matches every year starting from 1861.This information proves that cricket in Portugal was started playing over a century back.
But eventhough it was started a century back due to the tradition followed by the people of Portugal,this resulted in the failure for the development of cricket in the country, as people saw this games as sport with strong English ties.
So after that cricket was only played between small group of ex-pats and sons of British families of long standing residence in Portugal, and in spite of this it also attracted few locals, but it doesn't marked the development of the game.
So the basic thing fofor the development of cricket in Portugal is that, the game must be spread over a much wider spectrum than just simply talking about the old traditions.So at last cricket in Portugal received a decided boost after the 1974 revolution, which resulted in the Portuguese territories in Africa and the east gaining independence.
Apart from this when the portugal had colonies in Africa and India, they started to learn how to play cricket and especially in places like Goa,India and Mozambique.And also many Portuguese ex-pats who were staying in Angola and Mozambique relocated to Rhodesia, which is called as Zimbabwe at present, and also to South Africa .
As in these countries Cricket was developing at a rapid speed,the Portuguese children not only started to absorbed the game but also became acquainted with the intricacies and traditions of cricket.
After a political change in these countries the Portugal peole left to Portugal, but by this time, they had already developed a love and understanding of cricket.
Development of Cricket
Even though these people knew about cricket it was a tough task for using their talent and also bringing their talent together. But the European Cricket Federation, European Cricket Council (ECC), and the International Cricket Council - Europe Office, guided very well and for the over the past 2 decade, the administrators of cricket in Portugal have developed a lots of plan that would see the development of cricket into a truly national game within the next few years.
As a result of these developments in 1994, The Cricket Association of Portugal was established and later in 2001 it became Portuguese Cricket Federation . But a great success for them was in 1996 when they got the Affiliates membership status from ICC.
But inspite of these activities the pace of development of cricket in Portugal is generally slow and to be specific it is slow in Junior levels.The shorter indoor version of cricket was popular there than that of the lengthy outdoor cricket game . The indoor cricket league was started at Lisbon on 1999 after they had their national team for indoor competition in 1998.
This indoor competition was very popular and it flourished over the last eight seasons, and apart from this it was played at a very high competitive level,and at present there are 10 teams competing in two pools.
To encourage this game for the youngsters they started a new method by which if a team has an under 18 player and wins a match they will be given a bonus points.
This was a great success as in the last four seasons a full under 19 side has participated in the event,and in 2002 league they also managed to enter the semi-final. From this competition best players were chosen and they were given practice for the outdoor league.
This indoor cricket is very popular and relatively easy because the indoor football is extremely popular and it also uses the same facilities. But as far as theoutdoor cricket is concerned,even after many years, the only facility which is available in mainly the Lisbon area, where it is the hometown of majority of the cricketers live and the ground was a shale pitch, which did not encourage many people to play cricket.
But the trend is changed as they use grass field and it is is available 60kms north of Lisbon, which is purely dedicated to cricket and not any other sports. Apart from this two grass fields are available in cricket and we can find these in Porto and the other in the Algarve and they are mainly used for playing visiting foreign teams.
They also have level II coach and recently they also succeeded in training 8 level I coaches.The past record was not good because inspite of running two introductory coaching courses,they only had 36 teachers and it wa insufficient to train children in all schools.
But for the last two years, cricket training has being offered at
i)St. Peter's School,which is about 70 km. south of Lisbon
ii)St Dominic's International School in Lisbon and
iii)Very recently in a Portuguese school Escola Gaspar Correia .
The reason why it took a long time was until this they didn't have enough funds but now With the availability of funds from the ICC this year,they have already started running level I coaching course and as a result of this one of these coaches has managed to take cricket into a Portuguese public school for the first time.
International Exposure and Domestic format
They won the European Cricket Federation (which is now called as ICC Europe) Championship in 1995 and in 1996 they finished second.In 1977 during the ECF championship in 1997 the couldn't go to the finals as they lost in the semi finals.
They hosted the first international level tournament in 1999 i.e.,The European Cricket Council Affiliates Trophy which was held in Corfu and they also performed well as the finished runners - up , loosing to Greece in final.
The team was honoured when they received an invitation to participate in the ICC Europe Championships held at in Scotland in July 2000 alongside the European ICC Associates and they proved this by finishing fourth in B section after defeating Greece and Israel. Even though they lost to Gibraltar, France and Germany, they only lost by a small margin
In 2001 ECC Trophy was held in Austria and the Portugal team advanced to the final against Austria without losing even a single game and they went onestep further to clinch the titlte by 9 wickets which eventually made them to participate in the ICC Europe Championships which was conducted in Belfast in 2002.Even in this event they did well and finished third in the B-section, with victories over Israel,Gibraltar and Austria.
But the team didn't perform well in the 2003, 2005 and 2007 Affiliates/Division III Championships, as they finished fifth position. But when it comes to Indoor championship they are considered as a strong side and this can be proved as they won the ICC European Indoor Championships on three out of the ten occasions in which its team has competed.
They had their debut when the first participated in Versailles in France in February 1998, but they played well and won the cup . Again in 1999 in Mechelen, Belgium they maintained to defend their title.But in 2000 they lost to Holland in the semi-final who eventually won the trophy. But again in 2001 they managed to win the cup in their own soil in Marfa by beating the Dutch in the final. Their other results includes
#) 2002 in Belgium - they failed to make the semi-finals
#) 2003 in Denmark - Runners Up
#) 2004, 2005 and 2006 - Third place.
#) 2008 in Finland - Runners-up as they lost to Denmark in a closely contested final
The important thing to be noted is that the Player of the Tournament was won by the member of the Portugal team in 1998, 1999 and 2008.
The Lisbon league is the only league Portugal cricket which was played for more than a decade, and it was being played by a number of teams, which varies form 3 to 7,depending on the economic activity in the area.
At present a National league is being played by the local Lisbon based teams and also other two new clubs one from the Algarve and one from Almoster. At present there are four registered clubs, that includes
i)Asian CC
ii)Oeiras CC
iii)Comunidade Hindu Portuguesa CC (CHP) and
iv)Friends CC
and all the above mentioned clubs are from the Lisbon area,and apart from these clubs other major clubs includes
i)Oporto Cricket and Lawn Tennis Club im Oporto
ii)Barrington's C.C. in Algarve and
iii)Presban C.C. in Almoster.
Of all the clubs mentioned above the Asian CC has dominated the league, most of the time
But one of the major problem was that there was not suitable ground for years, as it was played at the Lisbon Casuals Sports Club which has a shale pitch, but now grass ground has introduced and now everything is going in right track.
Other Leagues in Portugal includes the the Kendall Cup, and this has a interesting history, because in mid-October 1861 an intrepid team of cricketers made their way south from the city of Oporto in northern Portugal to the nation's capital, Lisbon and some of them travelled by sea down the coastline while others made their way by horse-drawn carriage along the 320 kilometres of dusty, bumpy roads.
They arrived at the Lisbon Sports Club and and on 17-18th October participated in an historic two-day cricket match with their Lisbon hosts.For over 140 years this still dominates the Portuguese cricketing calendar and as a result of this every year the two sides from Oporto and Lisbon lock horns to contest for possession of the Kendall Cup and 25 occasions this Kendell cup didn't take part due to various reasons like wars, revolution, epidemics and floods being cited as sufficient reason to still the sound of leather on willow on Portuguese soil.
Over the 120 games played between them Lisbon won 54 games and Oporto won 52 games with one tied match and 10 drawn games. The reason why there are less draws is that before rules were enacted in 1975, if they couldn't play 4 innings, the team with first innings lead will win the match.
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