Cricket has been played in an organized fashion in Panama for some 85 years now, and the sport’s future here might be well judged from in front of The Panama News office --- where Perejil’s Indian Muslim boys often play cricket in the street. An even more tangible indication of cricket’s presence here was the recent ICC Americas Affiliates Championship, played on two large fields at Howard, in which Panama qualified for the 2005 ICC Trophy tournament in Ireland, where a good performance could advance this country to the 2007 Cricket World Cup.
The game of cricket, which came here during canal construction days with West Indian and Hindu workers, lives on primarily in the “Hindu” --- both Hindu and Muslim, in the common Panamanian usage of the word --- community, but in recent years hadn’t been well connected with the international scene, which is ruled by the London-based International Cricket Council.
This, despite the fact that one of the sport’s all-time greatest players, the West Indies’ George Headley, was born in Colon. The assimilation of Panama’s Afro-Antillean community to the point that Spanish is the first language of most of the younger generation has brought with it the decline of cricket culture and the rise of baseball heroes like Rod Carew. Now there is but one identifiably West Indian cricket team on the isthmus, most of whose players are of Hispanic Panamanian rather than Antillean descent.
Among those Panamanians who trace ancestry to the Indian subcontinent, cricket seasons tended to divide along religious communal lines. It really isn’t a matter of the Indians bringing old country hostilities based on language, religion and caste over here --- there is remarkably little of that --- but when Ramadan overlaps the dry season, as it generally does, then observant Muslims don’t play sports during the day and that makes for scheduling problems that have usually divided Hindus and Muslims into separate leagues.
However, with much good will from both sides there has been a reunification and growth of the cricket scene in recent years, with the establishment of new cricket fields, the organization of new teams --- we now have 18 of them, ranging from 10-year-olds to adults --- and the affiliation of the Panama Cricket Association (PCA) with the International Cricket Council (ICC). Leading Panama’s cricket revival and entry onto the international scene has been Hindu businessman Ringo Mayani, the proprietor of the Colon Free Zone’s Casa Bee’s and president of the PCA.
There has also been an impetus from abroad, as the ICC Development Program has been promoting cricket’s advancement around the world from the council’s London headquarters. For this tournament, which featured teams from Panama, the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Belize and Suriname, the ICC’s regional development officer and manager for the Americas, Grant Dunmore and Martín Viera respectively, teamed up with the Costa Rica Cricket Association’s Richard Illingworth to form the technical committee, with ICC cricket operations manager Clive Hitchcock as a special advisor and a crew of umpires and referees from Trinidad-Tobago, Canada, Bermuda, Argentina, the Cayman Islands and the United States.
So, in a physical sense, where does Panamanian cricket stand? The ICC’s Grant Dunmore rated the playing fields at Howard as about “four on a scale of 10,” which leaves a lot of room for improvement but allows an international tournament to be credibly held. The PCA’s Ringo Mayani told The Panama News that for many years this country’s cricket scene has developed on fields designed for other sports and that the development of excellent fields specifically for cricket is one of the organization’s priorities.
The stakes were that the winning team would qualify for the ICC Associates Tournament in Bermuda this coming July, the top three teams would go on to the ICC Trophy tournament in Ireland next year (the top five finishers in which will go on to turn the 2007 World Cup, along with those 11 teams already qualified), and the fourth-place team getting a chance to get to Ireland by way of an ICC Division 3 tournament.
The Bahamas came to Panama as the favorite, and they were not upset. Panama, which had a bye in the first day’s play, was resoundingly thrashed by the Bahamians by six wickets on the second day. Nobody beat the Bahamas in this tournament, but Belize came close, getting edged out 190-189.
(The Bahamians may have an extra added incentive, as that country is still in the running to host some of the 2007 World Cup matches. There thus remains a possibility of playing at the highest level of world cricket before a home crowd.)
The tournament at Howard was 50-overs play, and against the Bahamas the Panamanians were all out after 27.2 overs, with but 93 runs, while the Bahamians scored their 94th run in just 19.2 overs.
But after that drubbing Panama won its final three games of the tournament, beating Belize 225-182, Suriname by 7 wickets and the Turks & Caicos 275 to 205. The stars of Panama’s victories, as selected “men of the match” by the umpires in their games, were Irfan Trajia, Asif Patel and Zahir Motala respectively.
That gave the Panamanian squad a silver medal, not enough to go to Bermuda in July, but sufficient for a trip to Ireland next year.
At the end of play in the American Affiliates Tournament, the Bahamas qualified for both the Associates Tournament in Bermuda and the ICC Trophy competition in Ireland, and joining the Bahamians and the Panamanians in Ireland will be third-place finisher Belize.
The Belizean team was probably not the strongest one the country could have fielded, as a feud between rival national cricket associations kept some of the country’s best cricketers out of the tournament. That situation could change before next year’s ICC Trophy, with Belize going to Ireland with a much stronger squad than its third place finish here might suggest.
The fourth-place Turks and Caicos still have theoretical hopes to get to Ireland by way of a Division 3 tournament, while hapless Suriname is definitively eliminated from the 2007 World Cup cycle.
For the players on the national team, and for dozens of boys who dream of making future national teams and earning international recognition, Panama’s cricket season will run through this month.
Editor’s note: Some of the information in this article comes from other media, including the International Cricket Council’s website and online newspapers from several Caribbean countries.
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