“Then when the games were done I’d go out and try to bat like them. As I got more interested in the game, someone I looked up to was Brian Lara, who caught my eye in the way he played and the runs he scored. He got famous and I followed him everywhere he played.”
Papua New Guinea cricket captain Assad Vala.Credit:Richard Briggs
The growth of the game in PNG has been enormous over the past decade, to the point that Campbell said the governing body had built up as many as 300,000 school participants. While facilities, funding and better coaching will help further, a fully professional national squad was overdue for Cup qualification, having narrowly missed out twice before.
A strong performance this week will add to what Campbell calls a “fountain” of cricket talent.
“Kids playing the game in schools is one of the biggest programs in PNG,” Campbell said. “It outdoes the rugby, it outdoes soccer, it outdoes everything.
“We’re in 11 of the 22 provinces, we’re looking to build into more of them, but the game is growing and there’s a lot of attention around it for the World Cup. We have a strategic plan for the next four or five years to capitalise on what we’ve got in place now.
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“They’re playing it in the streets, they’re playing it on the beaches, and playing it for fun, loving the game. It’s not a chore, they’re enjoying the game, and they’ve got a huge amount of natural ability we can harness. We need more facilities, we need more level two and three coaches, which we’ll get, but in my time here, it shows that the level of interest in the game can be untapped and be a real fountain.”
As for the fostering of a cricket culture, Campbell’s own history has ensured the occasional hard edge to a struggle that extends beyond the field of play to the establishment of a cricket system to compete more regularly on the world stage.
“I had to room with Merv [Hughes] for the whole ’89 Ashes tour, and he used to tell me ‘if you don’t talk to someone on the field today I’m gonna bash you when you get home’,” he laughed.“But it was the era we played in. Assad and the boys sometimes say I’m angry, but that’s all because I care about cricket PNG.”
PNG strive for a ‘dream’ World Cup date with Australia
Source: Philippines Alive
