10 years ago I moved to Serbia, a lovely east European country to pursue my Bachelor degree. In the beginning, I was missing my family and friends a lot, but I was also missing cricket, which I used to play almost every day in Bangladesh. One day, one of my friends informs me that he has met a Serbian guy who wants us to join him in cricket practice. Really, I was overjoyed at the time? Is it true that Serbs play cricket? Serbia does, in fact, play cricket. Serbia is one of the newest members of the International Cricket Council. We are so new that we are still waiting for an ICC ranking :P. Till now we played to international match in 2019 in Greece against Bulgaria and Greece (I will write about this in my future post).
We are currently preparing for the T20 World Cup qualifiers, which will take place in Belgium in July. As a result, our cricket federation has hired an English coach to help us prepare for the tournament. For the past few months, we've been putting in a lot of effort in the training. We've been training indoors three days a week for the past two months, and we had the opportunity to attend our first National team camp in Belgrade last weekend, which was also telecast to our coach in England, who is currently supervising us from England due to the travel restriction. We did running, bowling, and fielding practice on both Saturday and Sunday, but we played a pair cricket match on Sunday. Because it was our first weekend outside, it was exhausting, but it was also a lot of fun. Our facility is located in a beautiful area near Belgrade, right next to a sports airport where pilots receive training. While we are playing cricket, we can watch small planes take off and land. As an aerospace engineer, I find that fascinating. Here are some highlights from our first outdoor training session.
At 9.30 a.m., we arrive at the location. Our Serbian coach is a stickler for punctuality. You must make a circle around the ground even if you are 1 minute late.
We are getting prepared for our practice session.
It's springtime in Serbia, so the trees are glistening at this time of year
Grasses also look fantastic
Me with my young Serbian friend. He just started practicing cricket a couple of years ago, but he is already a very good pace bowler.
We started with some running and then did some stretching
We didn't practice skier for last two months so it is high time to practice this drill :D
We began our pair match after some fielding practice. There were 17 of us, and 14 of us have qualified for the national team. Every member of the national team was given a jersey with a number to help our coach in England to identify each player.
Live streaming
Hang out after the training session.
Taking off
Last but not least... Mr. Lion in front of my house 😃
