England Women visit SOS Children's Village

England Women visit SOS Children's Village © ICC

The England Women's team took time out from their busy schedule of their tour of India to visit the first Indian SOS children's village in Delhi for the afternoon on Friday November 25.

SOS is a non-profit, non-government, voluntary organisation that is committed to the care of children.

SOS Children's Villages are prevalent in 132 countries around the world and help children who have been orphaned, are homeless or who have no-one to call their own. The Village takes the child in and provides him/her with a ready-made family in the form of a mother and siblings. Usually 10-12 children make up a family and if two siblings arrive together they are never separated.

Each family lives in the SOS Village, which has been purpose-built and there are approximately 10-20 families living in each village. The Village itself has a kindergarten, playing areas and learning centres, including a music room and an IT centre.

The elder children are encouraged to go to school outside of the village and mix with others from different backgrounds to ensure they all emerge as well-rounded individuals and to give them the opportunity to pursue careers after school. Many SOS children go onto university, some studying in other countries and some becoming professors, accountants and medics.

The players arrived to a hero's welcome with a line of children ready and waiting to place flower garlands around their necks, home-made cards and a banner in red, white and blue to make them feel at home!

After a brief description of the work of the SOS Children's Villages around the world, the players headed to the kindergarten where they were received by a class of youngsters who sang them a well-rehearsed song.

Following that, they split into three groups and visited an SOS Village home and met the resident family including the SOS mother, who has to go through at least two years of training before she can become a mother.

The mother of one group of children gets up at five am every day to make between 60-70 chapattis for her family! Each house has the same construction, but the décor is entirely up to the family who live there, so although all the same from the outside, they're all very different.

Subsequently the squad headed out to the playing field to be greeted by SOS Greenfields, the Village team, who were dressed in their whites ready for a game of cricket! It was decided that the two teams would play a five-over game; England Women v SOS Greenfields.

Head Coach Richard Bates swapped allegiances for this game and gave the children some coaching tips! Having won the toss, SOS Greenfields decided to bat first and didn't waste any time in hitting their guests for six! There was no display of any nerves as they continued to hit boundary after boundary, finishing on a respectable total of 87 from their five overs.

England medium-pacer, Isa Guha took control of the microphone and commentated on the whole match, even managing to draw some of the 50-strong crowd into chants of "Eng-er-land, Eng-er-land!". The others, however were too patriotic and replied with "In-dia, In-dia, Indi-a!" The crowd then got more vocal and there were definite chants of "Barmy Army, Barmy Army" from Bates' team as they waited in line to bat.

In reply, England women failed to reach the target, managing only 82, giving overall victory to SOS Greenfields!

There followed a brief presentation where each player and management official was given an SOS Children's Village clock and in return the team handed over two signed shirts, four cricket bats and various cricket equipment to help the talented youngsters.

After a brief cup of tea and biscuits and some photographs the team headed off to their hotel leaving behind chants from the children of "Barmy Army, Barmy Army" and a promise that the children would come and watch the first one-day international against India on Sunday. One promise they couldn't keep though was that they'd be chanting for England on the day!