It was England and India playing cricket at Savista!

Savista’s brand new cricket pitch – the latest addition to its many features – was inaugurated by a T-10 match played by two mixed India-England teams captained by two of Savista’s guests,  Francesca (11) and her brother Cameron (12).  Francesca is an under-12 player for Hampshire County, and  Cameron also plays in his County’s under-13 team. They were joined by the village team of Savista’s village Sanjharia, by some of Savista’s staff,  and Stuart, Francesca and Cameron’s father.

The final incentive for Savista’s new initiative of creating a cricket pitch – long under consideration, but never ever actually implemented until this winter – came from Stuart, who had written to ask if his children, who were “nuts about cricket”, would get opportunities to play during the family’s stay at Savista. We decided to activate the village cricket team that one of Savista’s owners had been invited to inaugurate a year earlier. And low and behold! On the appointed day, at the appointed hour, the village team arrived, and after the introductions and some practice play, the match began.

Cameron (12 yrs), when invited to contribute to the Savista blog, sent us the photos published here and the following commentary:

“Cameron’s team won the toss and chose to bowl first. The opening batsmen were Tony and Raju, Raju scored a superb 26 and with Vimal scoring 27, the team went onto score 89 bowled out in the last.

With this high score it would have been a hard task to win. However it came really close with Cameron scoring a great 22 runs and the team scoring a total of 60 runs. One of the highlights was Tony’s great bowling taking 2 wickets.What a game!!!!!”