On a rugby union field overlooked by a towering cathedral, a group of young refugees has introduced a small northern French town to cricket.
Saint-Omer lies 40km south of Calais, the main launchpad for attempts by refugees to enter England.
As in many Western European towns and cities, the integration of refugees is creating new challenges.
However, thanks to its new arrivals, Saint-Omer has become a rare center of cricketing excellence in a country where soccer and rugby union dominate.
The town broke new ground last month when a group of Afghan and Pakistani refugees wearing the colors of the Saint-Omer Cricket Club Stars brought home the regional Hauts-de-France Cricket League title.
“I didn’t know people played cricket in France,” said Ataullah Otmankhil, a devotee of the sport from northern Afghanistan.
When the athletic 21-year-old set out from his war-torn country for Europe “on foot, by train, truck, car, you name it,” his heart was set on reaching England.
However, his dreams of starting a new life in the home of Lord’s Cricket Ground came crashing down on the shores of the English Channel.
Day after day for six months he tried to clamber aboard a truck heading across the sea from Calais — to no avail.
When the squalid and sprawling, informal Jungle refugee camp was dismantled in Calais last year, and its occupants relocated around the country, Otmankhil was placed with a host family and began studying to become an electrician.
Picking up a bat again brings back memories of home, he said — a sentiment echoed by his 16-year-old Afghan teammate Oriakhil Shahid.
About 30 refugees, all from either Afghanistan or Pakistan whose ages range from 15 to 32, have joined the club, which has yet to attract any locals among its members.
For Oriakhil, one of the youngest, the club is “like family.”
“It’s for everybody, French, Afghan and others,” he said.
However, the sight of foreigners dashing around the rugby field, bats in hand, has not gladdened the hearts of all in this town of 16,000, situated in the northern heartland of the anti-immigration National Front.
“Sometimes I get insults aimed at me personally or the club,” said Nicolas Rochas, one of a handful of volunteers who is trying to help the migrants integrate.
The pressure to ensure the players are above reproach at all times is acute.
“As a club with young refugees we have an even greater duty to be exemplary on and off the pitch,” he said.
So far the efforts of both volunteers and players appear to be bearing fruit. Less than a year after being created, the club managed to win the regional title giving the players a pass into France’s third division.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier