The Cricket Brasília showed their development and teams in a great article from Centro Universitário IESB – Instituto de Ensino Superior Brasília.

Read more about the material below and learn more about cricket in the capital and our sport!

Reporting by Sabrina Felinto

A lot of people don’t know, but the Federal District has a cricket team. In fact, two. Brasilian teams, both male and female, have been very successful in the championships in which they participate.

Who counts is the player Aravind Krishnan, 31 years old, engineer, Indian by birth. He arrived in Brazil in 2008 to do a master’s degree in electrical engineering at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp). At the end of his studies, he started to work and decided to stay in Brazil, coming to live in Brasilia in 2013. Here, he met the Brasiliense Cricket Association (Abrac), and returned to practice the sport that, according to him, in India is like football in the Brazil. “Everyone plays cricket in any open place and learns the sport from the age of 8 or 9”.

According to the association, the sport was introduced in Brazil more than one hundred years ago by British railway workers who carried out work in the construction of railroads in the southern and northern regions of Brazil. Cricket has become a popular sport among Brazilian children, who have developed a simplified version, called “bet” or “taco”, and which remains a popular sport among today’s youth. Abrac was founded in 1989 and is affiliated with the Brazilian Cricket Association (ABC). Currently, the club from Brasilia has its base in the Clube Cultural e Recreativo Nipo-Brasileiro de Brasília and also plays in the Esplanade.

Cricket is a sport that requires only a bat, gloves, balls and leg protection. The objective of the game is to hit the ball thrown by the attacker, protecting a little house, called wickets, which is supported by three pieces of wood. Each team can have 11 players. When the team is on the attack it uses two players, and when it is on the defense it plays with everyone. Points are scored by hitting the ball. If one of the defenders catches the ball before it touches the ground, the attack does not score points.

Cricket in Brasilia

According to Krishnan, in Brazil there are more than 25 sports teams, seven of which are the state men’s teams that compete in the Brazilian championship: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Federal District, Espírito Santo, Amazonas and Paraná. Of the women’s teams, only two, the one from Brasília and the one from Poços de Caldas (MG), are part of the Brazilian championship.

In the Federal District, the men’s team is subdivided into three other teams, by nationality. One is formed only by Brazilians and is called Candangos. The other is made up of Asians, such as Indians, Pakistanis, Bengali and Sinhalese, and the third, by foreigners of various other nationalities. The women’s team has no division by nationality and is formed almost exclusively by Brazilians.

Sports nutritionist Erika Reinehr, 38, is the captain of the Brazilian women’s cricket team. She got to know the sport nine years ago. Erika says she likes cricket because it is “complete, it has the physical part, the strategies and the British charm”. She states that the sport is the same for both sexes, and the male and female teams even set up mixed teams to train. For the nutritionist, proximity to teammates is also very important. “The Brasilia team is made up of girls who are, above all, friends, we are a family!”, She says.

So much interaction has been reflected in the results. According to Aravind Krishnan, the women’s team won the women’s championship in 2013, 2014 and 2015, always beating the Poços de Caldas team. The men obtained good results in the Friendship Cup, in the years 2014 and 2015, also beating the team from Minas Gerais. In addition, the male team is runner-up in the 2015 Brazilian championship, ranked third in 2014 and second in 2013.

Part of these results comes from the dedication of Alexandre Miziara, 38 years old, doctor, captain of the Brasilia team. He was very fond of “bet” during his childhood and, in a course offered by the University of Brasilia (UnB), in 2009, he started training with the intention of becoming a member of the Brazilian team.

For the doctor, among the attractions of the sport are teamwork, the need for physical conditioning and the opportunity to participate in a national team. He also enjoys living with foreigners and, consequently, the knowledge of other cultures. But the best thing about the sport, for Alexandre, is still the playful question. “I still play‘ bete ’, but in a much more complex and fun way,” he says.

As captain, Alexandre believes that the best he can do for the team is to set an example of dedication, appreciation of the sport and tactical discipline. “I still try to make them understand how important physical preparation is, in addition to adapting functional exercise training with an emphasis on the muscles most demanded by cricket.”

Plans for the future

One of the association’s plans to make the sport develop, according to Miziara, is to present cricket for children and young people, to increase the level of the Brasiliense championship and, consequently, to have more human material for later teams.

For this reason, a project to teach cricket in schools was presented in Poços de Caldas – MG, where today almost 1,200 children practice the sport in public schools, every week. In Brasília, a similar project started this year, with the presentation of sport in public schools in São Sebastião. According to Aravind Krishnan, there are 120 to 150 children playing cricket in three schools in the Federal District. The goal, according to him, is to have professional teams in the city composed only of Brazilians, at various levels as an adult, under 13, under 17, who can win the championships.

The typical sport calendar starts in March and ends in November. The training sessions for teams from Brasilia are held on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Clube Nipo, from 5 pm to 8 pm and the games, on Saturdays and Sundays also at the club, or at the Esplanade. To contact the Brasiliense Cricket Association, just call (61) 8265 2935/9291 1204, send an email to cricketbrasilia@yahoo.com.br or visit the Facebook page, www.facebook.com/cricketbrasilia .