By Adam Hopkins
“It’s about making an atmosphere within the club that makes anybody from any background welcome and having an ethos which encourages people to get involved with the club rather than just play cricket,” says Wanstead & Snaresbrook chair Martin Pluck on his club’s success. “It’s getting the balance right between excellence and inclusivity.”
Wanstead & Snaresbrook’s men's first XI are one of the strongest sides in the country, this year challenging for the Essex Premier League title right up to the final day of the season and reaching both the semi-finals of the ECB National Club Championship and the final of the ECB National Club T20. However, they don’t just pride themselves on first-team results.
“We are very proud of our men’s first team, but they are not our definition of success,” club stalwart Arfan Akram said.
“We see the club as bigger than that. We define success as people turning up for the first time, slightly nervous with their five- or six-year-old boy or girl, and 10 or 15 years later they’ve become a coach or are one of our 50 or so volunteers. If you get the foundation right and plant the right seeds, every element of a cricket club sorts itself out.”
The club takes great satisfaction from its multiculturalism, charitable fundraising and broadening the horizons of its members. Over the years they have gone on self-funded tours to countries such as Sri Lanka, Kenya, South Africa and Jamaica, combining playing cricket with supporting various causes.
These tours are a big part of why Wanstead & Snaresbrook provides such a welcoming environment to new players and members regardless of their origins. If someone can welcome them into their country and community on the other side of the world, they can do the same back in Essex.
Their most recent overseas trip took them to Pakistan last month where they played fixtures across the country in support of Silk School System, the Aleem Dar Foundation and Shaukat Khanum Hospital, a facility set up by the Imran Khan Cancer Appeal.
The tour started in Lahore and ended 17 days later in Islamabad. They played their opening fixture in Lahore at Aitchison College before moving on to Lahore Gymkhana, the ground that hosted Pakistan’s first ever home Test match.
Next stop was Sialkot, where they faced the Silk School System and then the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, before a fixture in Jhelum and a match against the Islamabad Club under floodlights in the capital.
“In typical fashion, the Pakistani hospitality was second to none,” says Adnan Akram, Arfan’s brother, a regular visitor to Pakistan who was keen to show the country to his teammates who’d not experienced it before. “I did the visas and I’d say it was around half the touring party’s first time in Pakistan.”
Some of the tourists had misconceptions and preconceived stereotypes about Pakistan, especially around the current geopolitical situation. Seeing the country firsthand was an opportunity to form their own opinions without any outside influence.
“I didn’t really know what to expect,” says Tom Bentley, one of the players on the trip. “Naturally, there’s some caution. You read the western news and you think the situation security-wise is a bit more unstable than you’d perhaps like on a trip abroad. But when you get there, that’s not the case at all. My preconception that it might be unsafe was completely wrong. Pakistan is a superb place.”
The players and members of the tour party from non-Pakistani backgrounds were amazed by the positive attention they received, with everyone they met keen to hear their story and talk about cricket.
“Neither Tom nor I have ever been asked for so many selfies,” laughs Pluck. “My wife came with me, we went to a local market in Islamabad and wandered around and felt totally safe. She was treated superbly wherever we went. It was a real eye-opener as far as we were concerned.”
Bentley adds: “People were so keen to show us the best of Pakistan. Perhaps because we were different looking, people were 10 times more concerned with making sure we were having a good time.”
Tour member and photographer Faisal Kassam added: “I’d never been to Pakistan before. I grew up in Zimbabwe but my great grandparents are all Indian and I thought that would be a little bit of a contentious thing. It wasn’t in the slightest. When I was speaking to people out there about it, they didn’t even bat an eyelid.”
A notable takeaway the tourists had from the trip centred around how they can reflect similar levels of openness and hospitality back at their own club.
“I hope we’ve always been a very inclusive club,” says Pluck. “We’ve always tried to make people feel at home, whatever their ethnicity, and I think going on this tour to Pakistan made me realise even more how important that is.”
Even as a club already with such a positive culture and reputation for inclusivity, it’s heartening to see that they still think there’s room for improvement. Nowadays, players being welcome at a club despite their ethnic background is something that’s expected, as opposed to in the past when it may have come as a surprise.
“We were shocked. There was no trying to fit in,” according to Adnan, who joined Wanstead with his brother back in the late Nineties. “The guys went out of their way to make sure we were alright. At that time, 25 or 30 years ago, it was a big thing. Now it’s more the norm.”
Wanstead’s players left Pakistan pleasantly surprised by a number of aspects of the country, ranging from the food to the infrastructure to the stunning mountain scenery of the north, as well as the population’s incredible appetite for cricket.
“Every roadside in every city and town had people playing tapeball cricket,” says Arfan. “It was mindblowing seeing so much cricket played by people of all ages from all sorts of different communities.”
“They love cricket in a way that we don’t in the UK,” adds Bentley. “It’s a culture of cricket. It felt like every five metres someone was holding a bat or a ball.”
The final match in Islamabad provided a fine example of how cricket has become a game for everyone in Pakistan. “Nafeesa Aziz, one of our lady members, was on the tour with her parents and her two brothers and played in that game,” says Adnan.
“Nobody thought twice about it – a girl going out to bat under floodlights during a cricket match with men in Pakistan. Cricket has moved on so much in this country. It just seemed like it was the norm.”
This article appeared in this month's edition of Wisden Cricket Monthly.