I have always be fascinated with unique sports and cricket being one of them, I researched on the island to see if they had matches here.
I found two teams playing just a few hundred yards from the hotel on the coast.
Except, it was cricket, it was the traditional island game of Kilikiti, their version of cricket. The teams playing when we arrived were just practicing for the later afternoon game. And invited us to be a part of the practice.
After the practice, we took to the stands to see the Flying Fish team in yellow and the Fighting Foxes in red play a hardy match. I had to look up the rules and explain them to the rest of our group because none of us really knew what was going on. Mark played baseball in high school and had only a slight exposure to the English form of Cricket.
The equipment is unusual as the ball is made of a very hard rubber wrapped in pandanus (similar to a palm leaf) Players are not protected by any padding or masks, and will often wear only a lava-lava (or traditional skirt, however for this match, the men wore uniforms). The sennit-wrapped (hemp and string) wooden bats, which are shaped to individual players' likings and can be over a meter long, are three-sided, which means that the path of a hit ball is extremely hard to predict.
Just as with cricket, there is a batting team, a fielding team, and a pitch or field. The bowl alternates between two bowlers, one at each end of the pitch; accordingly, there are two wicket keepers (this as opposed to the single wicket keeper in cricket). These keepers are the only ones permitted to field the ball and stand behind the wicket to keep the ball in play.
There is typically no limit to team size, and teams are made up of whoever turns up regardless of gender or age. Other tourist accounts mention that strangers are often welcomed, as with us in practice. A kilikiti game is a multi-day community event full of singing, dancing, and feasting. Entire villages will compete and everyone will be involved, whether as player, cooks, or spectator.
The scoring was intense and complicated to follow as it depends on the runs scored versus the wickets lost. The Foxes edged out the Fish by a score of 252 for 7 to 230 for 9. All of our group was so into the game we were almost hoarse from yelling after the match. In our generosity and caught-up-ness in the excitement, Noah yelled, "drinks for everyone" and we all walked to the local bar hut and got beers for the two teams. The cost for the drinks was 1449 ST.
Man, we had a great day!
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