Mission Impossible?-All Chilean Team is Created in San Bernardo

On Saturday September 27th I went to investigate claims that a travelling Christian missionary had returned from his work in India a devoted cricket fan and endeavoured to start up his own club at `La Misión', near the town of San Bernardo.

I met the man in question, Miguel Angel Hernandez, at the recent AGM and was amazed by his passion for the game. To sit through a two hour meeting discussing the legalities of a cricketing association and financial implications of purchasing a `Flicx' pitch in ones second language takes some serious character; and so afterwards I quickly arranged for a training session with him and his side to assess the situation at hand.

Before journeying even deeper into the sticks than I currently resided, I fully expected to be confronted by some extraordinary hybrid of the glorious game, pieced together by memory and improvisation. However, as I soon found out, this was not to be the case.

In true Chilean style the session started some two or so hours late, although to be entirely truthful the delay might have been perceived as my fault. I tried desperately to follow Miguel's more than adequate directions but after some dubious `help' from the local bus drivers I eventually had to be driven from the centre of the (wrong) town to La Misión by what turned out to be San Bernardo's answer to Andrew Flintoff. Although this was before I had spent a good twenty minutes standing out sufficiently enough to warrant the attention of a young lady who obviously found the shorts-sandals-pouring rain combo endearing, inviting me as she did to a party that night and giving me her phone number. However, I digress...

I met with Miguel Angel and we waited for the rain to stop before heading out to the ground (La Parcelina Arena), which Miguel had told me was not "100% grass". In tow was a troop of eight eager looking men and their kit, specially imported from India, of course.

When I had found a patch, mostly of mud, to act as our wicket for the day, play got underway. I was pleasantly surprised by the standard of play that I was witnessing and was reluctant to switch from the role of umpire to that of coach. As should be expected there was the occasional chuck and some baseball-esque wild swings for the ball, but on the whole these guys knew what they were doing.

When I did offer any advice on batting the players were keen to learn and soon put in to practice what they had been shown, driving, pulling and even leaving the ball. After half an hour's training, the players split in to two teams of four (Miguel Angel appointing himself as scorer and spectator) and things started to get serious. The teams' respective captains were talking tactics and I found myself explaining that, for me, it was sensible to bat first and take advantage of the relatively good condition of the wicket before it deteriorated.

Owing to time restrictions we agreed to play eight over innings, with everybody bowling twice. This gave me a great opportunity to look at each player's individual and, in my head, I had already chosen the opening bowlers, a batting all-rounder and a more than capable wicket keeper for their opening game against Viña del Mar.

After the innings were up the team then showed me that they had not neglected perhaps the most important side of their game: the cricketing tea. And so we retired to the dinning room for a feast of mash potato where we discussed the finer points of faith, religion and leg spin.

During my time in La Misión, Miguel showed me books on cricket that he had read, articles on the world cup that he had cut out and saved from Indian newspapers and playing cards of his favourite players. It was then that I realised he truly understood what it was to be a cricket fan.

For Chilean cricket the creation of a side in San Bernardo is somewhat of a fairytale. Without any external help they have proven that miracles can and do happen and we can only hope that others can follow the pioneering example of this side from La Misión.