As always, it was a great pleasure to be at the PKWA this evening, celebrating another successfull year for their cricket club. Seeing them all reminds me what an immense privilege it is to represent along with my ward colleagues, this marvellous community.
Cricket is a great sport, which people young and old (up to a degree), can participate in and all enjoy. It’s a great way to stay fit and healthy and let off steam without causing any harm, meet different people take part in what amounts to ritual battle with its various aspects but at the end of the match, remain good friends. It’s a sort of conflict where everyone sticks to the rules and no one gets hurt, usually.
Cricket has become ingrained into our culture and language. We make fair play and “playing the game” a priority in all we do. If we think something is not fair, we say its just not cricket.
Would it not be great if we could resolve our disputes through a cricket match. Instead of elections, a cross-party cricket tournament would n’t that be more entertaining? I think Labour would be pretty save in Batley! In international conflict, a cricket match instead of war, so in Iraq, a President Bush 11 against Saddam Hussain’s 11 would have saved a lot of blood shed.
Cricket has become very popular in Afghanistan so why don’t all the political factions have cricket teams instead of armies so that foreign powers would have no excuse to invade. A Taliban cricket team might get a lot of support in a match against a Government 11 even if it was infiltrated by the CIA!
We are a long way off using cricket to resolve disputes but it can be used to build bridges and we should continue to use cricket as a way to bring communities closer together. It is good to see its popularity growing locally and our teams continuing to do so well. Many congratulations to the PKWA cricket team for becoming champions this year, we are very proud of you all.
On another note, it’s good to see this community centre being used. It is a great asset for the community and needs to be used fully for it to remain viable, so please support it as much as you possibly can.
Thank you.
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