Choosing cricket over gangs

"Goodbye Pinky, the barrio will miss you." Like many impoverished towns in Guatemala, there are no road signs pointing to Santiago Sacatepéquez, even though it's barely two kilometres off the highway from Guatemala City to Antigua, the country's sun-kissed tourist mecca.

Pinky, one of the countless young men slain in Guatemala's gang culture, is not an alias likely to mean much to tourists or business elites making a weekend getaway to Antigua. But the sportsmen of Santiago won't forget him any time soon. Should a batsman glance up after taking his guard, or a bowler pause at the top of his mark, they can read the farewell to Pinky daubed on the wall of the municipal stadium.

This was the place where Geovanny Jolón Yucute, 20, first shuffled in to bowl a cricket ball. During his teens, several of Geovanny's friends were handpicked to be errand boys for drug-pushers higher up the chain. Some family members feared he might go the same way. But Geovanny rejected that path in favour of God, a university degree, and a regular spot in the Guatemala middle order. Geovanny spent hours in the local internet café, streaming YouTube videos of Shane Warne and other legspinners, before taking to the streets to mimic their flicks of the wrist. "I enjoyed the challenge," he says. "Cricket was unlike anything I'd ever tried before. None of my friends understand what it is. They think I'm weird. They don't know the rules or how it works. They only know football."

"Geo changed beyond recognition in the space of a couple of months," says Luke Humphries, the Guatemala Cricket Club captain and head of the Christian mission where Geovanny works. "He's more communicative and generally happier. And it's essentially because he's playing cricket for the Guatemalan national team. That's a huge thing for a guy from his background. Just being included, and playing a role in a society or team, means everything to young people here." At first, Geovanny's younger brothers, Kevin and Marvin, looked on in consternation. Now they spend much of their spare time bowling at Geovanny on artificial football pitches across Sacatepéquez.

The Jolón brothers discovered cricket because in 2003 Russell Humphries, a comprehensive schoolteacher from Hampshire, and his teenage son Luke heard the call from God to go out to the mission field. They sold their house and spent the next two years staying in friends' spare rooms before venturing to Central America in January 2005. It was less than a decade since Guatemala had emerged from a brutal 36-year civil war between a succession of US-backed military regimes and a shaky coalition of leftist groups mainly supported by the indigenous Mayan majority. A quarter of a million Guatemalans died or are unaccounted for. It took until February of this year for the first wartime sexual violence trial to open in a Guatemalan court.

One consequence of the war was that Mayans converted en masse from Catholicism to Evangelism, so there was no shortage of takers when the Humphries family established the El Refugio Centro Cristiano in Santiago in 2006. "We specifically chose Santiago in order to work with the very poorest indigenous people," says Luke, "because the work we do here will have the biggest impact." In addition to religious teaching and baptism, the school provides pre-school education and a link to further studies in Guatemala City. Around 350 indigenous children have passed through the system, including Geovanny, who now studies Maths at university and teaches Maths, Physics and cricket at El Refugio.

When classes break up, football is the first choice for boys in the schoolyard. Guatemala have never come close to World Cup qualification but many young 'Chapins' aspire to earn a lucrative contract, perhaps in the United States. But Luke believes that football is simply too adversarial for his line of work. "I used to put on some football for gang members, and it worked, to some extent," he says. "But the thing about football is that people get so worked up about it. I found it hard to control the boys' anger and disappointment if they lost. And with all the prejudice towards the indigenous people by Ladinos [those of mixed indigenous and European descent], it can get really nasty. There were a lot of fights. Once or twice our boys were run off the pitch, quite violently."

The social barriers in Guatemalan society extend to football, with many of the top professionals coming from privileged backgrounds. Then there is the alleged corruption: Brayan Jimenez, the former head of the Guatemalan Football Federation, was arrested in January as part of the US inquiry into corruption in FIFA. US prosecutors claim Jimenez and former secretary general Héctor Trujillo took a "six-digit bribe" to sell TV rights to 2018 World Cup qualification matches.

At first, cricket was just something Russell and Luke did together as father and son, to remind them of English summers. But gradually they realised the game's values could be applied to promote togetherness in their new environment. "Right away, when we started cricket, there was visibly more respect between the players," says Luke. "They weren't under quite so much pressure to win, and a lot of boys responded to that. They were just enjoying learning to play an unusual game." Some boys interpreted the duel between bat and ball as a metaphor for something deeper. The way a batsman guards his wicket can be likened to him putting a price on life. A dropped catch, or a narrow escape thanks to a sympathetic umpire, is treated as a stay of execution. A bowler has to strive for wickets, rather than resort to the quick fix of a gun or machete.

Word got around, and Luke discovered more cricketers: British and Australian backpackers who had schlepped to Antigua and never left; Indians who ran call centres in the capital; even the odd Chapin. There were enough players to form Guatemala CC and venture out to play the more established clubs in neighbouring countries. In their first international engagement, Guatemala whitewashed El Salvador to win the 2012 Easter Cup.

Humphries' bottom-up approach is unusual for a sport that often spreads to new territories through small ex-pat communities. The ICC, in response to the Humphries' plea for assistance, have sent a set of stumps and a pair of bats, but Affiliate membership is a pipedream unless Guatemala can find some more clubs and secure a ground. For a while, they did play on a lovely field belonging to the Antigua International School, in view of the region's three great volcanoes; Fuego would regularly blow its top while play was going on. But the school relocated, and the cricketers are still waiting for a coffee or banana plantation owner generous enough to clear some crops for a pitch.

Luke does not waver, even when asked if he ought to have chosen a more accessible sport. "Sure, the kids in the school have the internet," he says. "But in real terms, they have next to no interaction with what's going on outside Guatemala. Cricket opens those doors."

Geovanny had barely left Santiago until 2014, when Guatemala played a series in El Salvador. And in December last year, he was part of the team which reached the final of the Volcano Cup in San Salvador, before losing to Costa Rica. "By going to El Salvador to play cricket, Geo is experiencing Salvadorian life, British life, Indian life, Zimbabwean life," says Luke. "Getting to know other people opens his minds to an existence outside the barrio. Those who've seen the worst things in life need to know that there is a better alternative."

This article first appeared in All Out Cricket. Click here to find out more about the magazine, available in print or digital form.