Most people in Iceland know what June 16 holds for them. On that day, serenaded by thousands of travelling fans, the country’s football team will make its World Cup debut in Moscow against one of the best teams and probably the greatest footballer of all time. A month and a half after that game against Argentina, on July 28, another of Iceland’s international teams will make its international debut.
There will be no Viking claps or travelling fans when Iceland take on Switzerland in their first ever international cricket match. The 50-over game in London will be followed by a T20 the next day, but there is every chance that someone peering back in time from the future will find the occasion every bit as consequential as their football team’s bow on the biggest stage of them all.
For all the criticism that cricket gets for its failure to expand beyond the Commonwealth, it has found a way to sprout in the unlikeliest of locations. For starters, Iceland doesn’t get enough daylight for nine months of the year and doesn’t have a cricket pitch or a shop that sells bats and balls. Around 50 people play the game in the entire country — significantly less than the number you’d find at early morning practice in one of Chennai’s academy grounds. Yet, they make do.
“We can only reliably play cricket outdoors in the Icelandic summer (June, July and August),” says Kit Harris, secretary of Krikketsamband Íslands, as Iceland’s cricket body is known. “So we play cricket on the football pitches both indoors and outdoors.”
The indoor pitches Harris refers to sprung up across the country in the mid-2000s as football gained in popularity. The artificial turf littered with rubber crumbs is hardly ideal for cricket. A YouTube video of the two cricket teams that Iceland has — the Reykjavik Puffins and the Kopavogur Vikings — taking on each other shows how life is on these pitches. Two sets of stumps are set up just outside the centre circle where footballers kick off. Every ball by a fast bowler rises up to the batsman’s shoulders. And shots are hardly run for — the dimensions of the field ensure most of those are boundaries.
“Coaching on 3G indoor football pitches has its challenges too, as it’s so different from grass or proper astro wickets,” says Darren Talbot, the Englishman who coaches the national team.“We’ve got very good at creating adapted games to get round hall size. We adapt the games by only allowing boundaries for straight hits, and adding some indoor cricket rules sometimes such as two runs for completing a run. It all goes towards improving their cricketing skills and game sense.
“The stumps out in Iceland are like nothing I’ve seen,” Talbot says. “They are massive metal poles that look like they’ve been built by a metalwork student at school — but they do the job! The metal stumps are because there is no cricket shop in Iceland and ordering equipment to be delivered there, especially heavy items like springback stumps is very expensive. As it’s astro (turf), it can’t be standard stumps as there’s nowhere to put them in the ground.”Imagine that! A country where something as basic as stumps are a luxury!
***
The International Cricket Council currently has 104 members — the 12 full members who are eligible to play Test Cricket and 92 Associate Members. Neither Iceland, nor their opponents in July, Switzerland, are among these. The reason? There simply aren’t enough players or grounds.
The ICC’s membership criteria require that teams have a minimum of eight senior teams playing at least five games a year as well as access to two cricket grounds. The requirement looks pretty easy to fulfil at first glance but for a country like Iceland, with around 350,000 people in total, getting 200 of them to turn to cricket is easier said than done. But things are looking up. “We have an invitation from the municipalities of Reykjavík and Kópavogur to run after-school cricket clubs,” says Harris.
“But we need to do it properly if we’re going to make the most of this chance. We need a qualified coach to devise the programme and to come to Iceland to train the players who will run and supervise the programme. We also need junior cricket equipment. At the moment, there are no Icelandic children playing cricket, but Iceland is one of the sports-active countries, so there is certainly a big opportunity here in the future.”
Also adding to the numbers are the refugees who come to Iceland with the government admitting around 50 every year.“I’m pleased to see numbers growing thanks to tapping into the refugee programmes there,” says Talbot. “There are plenty of potential players we just need to get word out there. It may never be as popular as football but once we start our schools programme I am confident we will capture the imagination of some of the locals.”
But before they can get the kids to play, Iceland’s cricket officials need to create the conditions for them to play. The artificial football turf that the adults play on isn’t the safest for kids — the variable bounce ensures that. And to create cricket-specific infrastructure, they need money.
***
The first time Iceland’s cricket officials tried crowdfunding something, it did not go very well. “We tried it in 2017 and raised a grand total of £30,” says Harris.But in 2018, with the games against Switzerland looming, Harris & Co had one more shot at crowdfunding. This time, the story was different. “We tried again this year and we’ve raised £5000 so far,” Harris says.
From within the country, the Icelandic State Circus and a local hotel came on board. But a lot of that money came from the cricket community of the discussion and news aggregation website Reddit. When Iceland walk out in July, they will be wearing shirts bearing ‘r/cricket’ — the link to the sub-reddit group that sponsors them.
“For the next two years Reddit Cricket is sponsoring the Iceland national team, its overseas tours, its schools programme and the Domestic Cup (renamed the Volcanic Ashes),” Harris says. The latter is a five-match series between the Reykjavik Puffins and the Kopavogur Vikings.
Adding to that calendar will be the Íslensk Premier League (it’s pronounced “eee-pee-ell”, Harris points out). A six-a-side tournament also sponsored by Reddit Cricket, the IPL will feature teams from the nearby cities of Seltjarnanes, Gardabaer and Hafnarfjordur, in addition to the existing two teams. The crowdfunding campaign to find sponsorship for the individual teams are online now — it costs just £100 (little more than `9000) to become a team sponsor.
On Friday, Iceland officials launched another ambitious crowdfunding scheme, raising money to import and install the country’s first proper artificial cricket pitch. In one day, it has already raised close to £600. “We need about £3000 to install an artificial pitch and probably at least another £2000 to develop and launch our schools programme,” Harris says. “Those are the foundations on which we can build a cricketing legacy.”That pitch, when they get it, will just be one small step forward for Krikketsamband Íslands.But it’ll be the unlikeliest of leaps for cricket.