Cricket Fever Seizes Vatican; Pakistan Extends a Helping Hand

Last year in Octo­ber, Vat­i­can City found­ed its first ever Crick­et team. Offi­cial­ly named as St. Peter’s Crick­et Club and pop­u­lar­ly called Vat­i­can XI, the team is com­prised of an inter­na­tion­al group of Catholic priests and sem­i­nar­i­ans from Rome. Spon­sored by the Vatican’s Pon­tif­i­cal Coun­cil for Cul­ture – the equiv­a­lent of depart­ment of sports, the mul­ti-nation­al team includes eight Indi­ans, two Sri Lankans, and one each from Pak­istan,

Eng­land and Ire­land. Accord­ing to one of the offi­cial state­ments, the estab­lish­ment of the club has been greet­ed with tremen­dous enthu­si­asm and its aim is ‘to ensure that the Vat­i­can and there­by the entire Catholic Church bet­ter under­stand all that the crick­et play­ing peo­ple love and appre­ci­ate’.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Pak­istan is extend­ing its sup­port to these young priest-crick­eters. Ear­li­er this month on 8th of July, Gov­er­nor Sindh Dr. Ishrat-ul-Ibad pre­sent­ed a cheque and six test-qual­i­ty made-in-Pak­istan crick­et bats to Fr. Robert McCul­loch, a com­mit­tee mem­ber of the Club, in a cer­e­mo­ny held at Gov­er­nor House Sindh. The amount of the cheque has not been made pub­lic though. The Gov­er­nor called it ‘a gift for our friends in the Vat­i­can as a token of friend­ship’.

The con­nec­tion between Sindh gov­ern­ment and the Vat­i­can team came about through Mr. McCul­loch, an Aus­tralian priest who has been work­ing in Pak­istan for 34 years, and Aamir Bhat­ti, the Pak­istani mem­ber of the team from Karachi. Aamir Bhat­ti has been prepar­ing in Rome for three years to become a Catholic priest and has been select­ed as the team’s wick­et keep­er.

The author­i­ties at Vat­i­can, proud of the diverse com­po­si­tion of the club, are look­ing for­ward to an expe­ri­ence of the val­ues that ‘Asian con­ti­nent has imbibed into the game’ includ­ing ‘its gen­tle­man­ly way of life, fierce com­pe­ti­tion, intri­cate skill and great tra­di­tion of hos­pi­tal­i­ty’.

Such antic­i­pa­tions were expressed in a thank you let­ter writ­ten to Gov­er­nor Ibad by the Pres­i­dent of the Club.

Vat­i­can XI will trav­el to Eng­land in Sep­tem­ber to play with the Arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury XI, the Roy­al House­hold at Wind­sor Cas­tle, and oth­er teams. Pope Fran­cis will bid farewell to this ‘holy’ team before it leaves for Eng­land. Pro­ceeds from the match­es will be giv­en to dif­fer­ent char­i­ties.

The Gov­er­nor has also offered to send an expe­ri­enced test crick­eter to train the team in Octo­ber of this year. Dr. Ibad, him­self a crick­eter, has also pro­posed to hold a tri-team tour­na­ment in 2015 between Gov­er­nor of Sindh XI, the Vat­i­can XI, and the Arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury XI as a way to project friend­ship and har­mo­ny through sports.