Colombia's first homegrown cricketer
01-Oct-2014
Cricket may be about to spark to life in a tiny but significant way in Colombia, which is due to host the inaugural Amazon Cup, a triangular T20 tournament also featuring Brazil and Peru. When the tournament begins, a Colombia-born player, Jairo Andres Venegas, will represent his national team for the first time. The Guardian's John Ashdown profiles the wicketkeeper, who is "almost certainly the only Colombian to have a Lord's tea-towel framed and hanging on the wall of his living room".
For Venegas it represents the apogee of a journey that began not long before Allan Border's no-nonsense Australia side thrashed David Gower's fracturing England in 1989. And it's a journey that began, of course, in, um, Belgium. "I was six years old, we were living in Belgium because my father used to work for Phillips," he says. "My older brother and I studied at the British School of Brussels and while my brother actually played at school, I did Kwik Cricket or whatever it was called at the time. We came back to Colombia the next year and cricket became just a memory of good times."
A flirtation with rugby followed and the first time Venegas played what might be called "proper cricket" was in Bogotá, after an email to Lord's, conversations with ICC Americas, contact with the British Embassy in the Colombian capital and a long wait. The wait, though, has been worth it - now he is a committed convert and admits to being the "most cricket-obsessed Colombian in the country".