Bhutan’s cricketers: The guardians of their galaxy
What if you were told that during the Covid pandemic— with training, matches and activity erased—a cricket community pitched in as frontline workers?
Captains, batters, bowlers, all-rounders, coaches, staff became nurses, guards, street wardens and caterers. At checkposts, they kept an eye on trucks, drivers, cleaners and materials going in and out of the area. They turned cooks for volunteers; they were porters carrying food supplies; they were night patrol.
This happened next door in Bhutan, whose cricketing policy of compassion and outreach made it the Asian representative for a 2020 global ICC Development Award. The Bhutan Cricket Council Board (BCCB)’s push against the pandemic was named the Asian winner in the Cricket 4 Social Good Initiative category, with Uganda declared the global winner on Tuesday.
Bhutan’s cricket is a little over two decades old, born of the arrival of cable television to the Himalayan kingdom in 1999. The 1999 World Cup sparked its first generation of cricketers, Bhutan making its men’s international debut in 2003. Cricket is played in ten of its twenty districts but on artificial strips, set down in open spaces or football grounds.
The country’s first captain Damber Gurung, 41, former allrounder, also former national coach (level-3 certification), is currently BCCB CEO. Like the rest of Bhutan’s cricket folk, he too is waiting for the country’s first turf wicket to be put into play on its first international ground in the border town of Gelephu. Bhutan’s senior women are the first users of Gelephu’s four training strips— two turf, two artificial—preparing for their first international match: November’s Asian qualifier for the T20 World Cup in Malaysia.
Before the pandemic struck, Damber says, 2020 was to be the year of the big push. Competing with football and archery, Bhutan’s cricket had seen an exponential growth in its involvement numbers, from 13,000 to 45,000 in players, coaches, grassroots workers, officials, staff with 50 tournaments held every year across schools, clubs and men’s and women’s agelevel cricket. Bhutan Cricket had worked with UNICEF in schools for the past five years, using their common platform to introduce cricket to children alongside advocacy work in health, sanitation and empowerment of the young. The next big move would have been to spread cricket into 120 more schools in all corners of the country dotted by the Himalayas and its valleys.
De-suung training
Except the Covid-19 virus brought the best laid plans to a standstill. With the pandemic raging and cricket activity suspended, Damber says, “our board and our people decided to request all our office, staff, players, coaches, whoever was involved with us to do De-suung training.”
De-suung means ‘guardians of peace’ and is a three-week programme run by the Bhutanese government where the citizen is given a crash course in disaster management, with the intention of preparing volunteers for times of crisis.
Bhutan’s first lockdown in August 2020 had De-suung’s cricket trainees turn out in their bright orange uniforms and taking on unusual duties. Among other things, former women’s captain and current batter, Denchen Wangmo, 28, worked on the Bhutan-Bengal border for two months. It was 13 hours on her feet at the checkpost, ensuring that Indian truck drivers went into quarantine rooms, out of contact with Bhutanese labour who unloaded the material on and off their vehicles. “Some drivers are good, some argue. But as our King says, we never shout or argue back. We request.” She’s now at Gelephu and will have you know, “I’m an aggressive batter and can hit sixes.”
District coach Kencho Norbu, 30, a cricketer from the age of 12, wicketkeeper batsman in his playing days, had always wanted to do De-Suung training. It was a short, sharp experience of military duty including physical training and firing guns. During lockdown, Kencho would patrol at all hours, keeping vigil in street corners, vaccination centres, even cremation grounds. He walked four hours with volunteers and villagers through the Dochula Pass (at an altitude of more than 10,000ft), 20kg rations on his back for monks stranded up at the Lungchutshe Temple. Twice.