Getting a full eleven together each weekend can be a bush cricket captain’s toughest challenge. But that is not a problem in Cooma. The Monaro district competition has actually added a team this season, thanks to a passionate group of migrants.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Since he can remember, Mirza Zeeshan has been crazy about cricket.
00:09In his birth country of Pakistan, he wasn't alone.
00:13Everybody loves cricket.
00:14Every street, every playground, everywhere.
00:17First week, I came here, I saw a cricket match, I said wow.
00:22It just wakes up a lot of things from the past.
00:26Hundreds of migrant worker families have relocated to Kuma in recent years to work on the Snowy
00:322.0 project.
00:33People are coming from around the world and that's why we have a lot of players registered
00:38here.
00:39With fresh faces in town, a new local team has formed, the Kuma Titans, comprised of
00:44mostly Indian and Pakistani players.
00:48The team are tough competition.
00:50Even when it was minus three, minus four, you could walk past one of the ovals in town
00:56and they were playing cricket and they played all winter.
00:58It's been quite infectious the way they love cricket.
01:02The Kuma Titans are one of seven cricket clubs to form in New South Wales this season.
01:07In its latest census, Cricket Australia has acknowledged challenges faced by sports clubs
01:13listing the retention of players as a priority.
01:16We're kind of bucking the trend a little bit in country areas.
01:20The Monaro District Cricket Association has not seen a new team join its ranks in decades
01:24until this season when the Kuma Titans signed up.
01:27Members of the cricket community here in the Alpine region say that the team have brought
01:31an additional level of skill to the game.
01:34Some of their batters are very big hitters.
01:36We're going to play aggressive.
01:38And the commitment to the sport may keep families in the country town longer.
01:42The environment that we have here, I don't think so, it's very hard to live at the moment.
01:48So yeah, I think they're going to live longer for here.
01:52Country cricket in full swing.