By Don Cameron
You may have a keen awareness of the days when the pension lands, and limit your thrill-seeking to a rapid jaywalk across the road, if you can recall watching Ilikena Lasarusa Talebulamaineiilikena-mainavaleniveivakabulaimaina-kulalakeba playing cricket.
For scorebook and scoreboard purposes the name was mercifully cut to "I. Bula," but this burly Fijian batsman was rather short on mercy when he decided to attack the bowling.
Barefooted, with a sulu lapping round his knees, Bula would rank among the most thunderous hitters the game has known, and when he was at full throttle, passing tramcars and low-flying aircraft were at risk.
During two Fijian tours of New Zealand in the 1940s and 50s he was the star attraction in teams of very respectable talent.
Alas, Bula and his famous friends are now fading memories and the fame of Fijian cricket is seldom heard beyond their own islands.
This weekend Auckland will host a conference dedicated to bringing back the charm and marvellous humour that is cricket in the nearby island nations, and which is now flourishing, with high promise of success, in Japan.
The meeting is part of the International Cricket Council development programme, with delegates from Papua New Guina, Fiji, Hong Kong, Japan, Vanuatu, Brunei, Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, South Korea, China, the Philippines and New Caledonia, and the man in charge is Andrew Eade, some years ago a warmly respected cricketer with the Suburbs-New Lynn club in Auckland and now early into a totally fascinating cricketing quest.
Urged by Ali Bacher, the mainspring of South African cricket, the ICC set up organisations to develop cricket in five regions - Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe and East Asia-Pacific, with Eade in charge of the last-named area.
The five group managers come under the control of a global manager, and the whole programme is being eagerly driven by Bacher.
So much so that this week came the news that two extra sides from outside the test ranks will be among the 14 countries playing in the 2003 World Cup in South Africa, and Bacher's aim is to have 16 competing in 2007.
This will mean seven sides outside the present nine test-playing countries will be involved, opening a wider door to countries such as Bangladesh, Kenya, Scotland, Ireland and, as this weekend's delegates will be very aware, teams from the Pacific-Asia area.
Fiji might have senior ranking. With Sri Lanka and the United States they were first to be granted associate member status of the ICC, but Eade, in only nine months of hard work, has discovered potential cricket riches in some unlikely places.
Japan, especially. Eade has found that cricket is a long-established men's and women's sport at many Japanese universities.
One Kenichiro Matsumura was looking for a new sport for his university, thumbed backwards through a sporting dictionary until he came to C for croquet, found that croquet was already established at his university, so cricket was the next candidate.
Now cricket has a wide-ranging club structure, an Australian named Trevor Bailey (not "the Barnacle") is busily involved in coaching, and the focus is more and more on catering for Japanese players rather than expats from other lands.
Eade has been highly impressed with Japan's potential, for they have the population, the economic base and, especially, total admiration for the culture and customs of the game.
Fiji has also profited from some Australian help. Some years ago a team from the New South Wales inland town of Dubbo toured Fiji and played in the local Crompton Cup competition. Dubbo followed up by sending Carl Sharpe on regular visits to Fiji to aid with coaching and general organisation.
Those with still-sharp memories of Bula's blazing batting and the following Fijian visits in the 1950s and 1960s will have a sympathetic regard for Fiji, and perhaps New Zealanders may squirm a little that more was not done to help a cricketing friend.
New Zealanders cannot be blamed for the latest Fijian cricketing problem. Seven-a-side rugby is now the fiercest sporting religion in Fiji. The game is becoming a 12-months-a-year business, and cricket is losing its traditional playing venues in the drier months.
But the focus will not only be on Fiji. When the Pacific Islanders play their own version of the game during the tea break of the Australia-New Zealand one-day international at Eden Park today (the game is named "kirikiti" but is now pronounced "kilikiti") a senior Samoan citizen will be watching the event keenly.
Name of Sebastian Kohlhase, the celebrated "Seb" who in the 1960s played cricket for Northern Districts and Queensland with a cavalier smile on his face, bowled fast-medium for Auckland and hit the ball almost as far as the legendary and fondly-remembered I. L. Talebula ... etc ... etc.
Cricket: Fiji, Japan among ICC targets for cricket development
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