DISABLED WORLD CUP: The real champions of cricket

HAMISH BIDWELL
There'll be no Ricky Ponting, no Andrew Flintoff, no Sanath Jayasuria and definitely no Ross Taylor.
It'll be a cricket World Cup all right but none of those players will be present. It won't be in the West Indies for that matter, or in 2007 either. But it will be a World Cup nonetheless, contested by players from the best 10 teams on the planet all vying for the winner's trophy.
The competition will be fierce, the rivalries intense and millions of television viewers will be captivated by it, yet the chances are that nobody in this country will even know it's on.
Why? Well, that might have something to do with the players. They're not household names you see but, in many ways, they have more right to call themselves champions than any of us.
Because these athletes will be Special Olympians, competing in their inaugural World Cup in Mumbai, India, where they'll be playing under the proud gaze of tournament director Mike Goodacre.
Yes, he of Bluewater Stadium fame, where he entertains and informs the crowd in his ground announcing role during Hawke's Bay United's home matches in the New Zealand Football Championship.
Goodacre's in India at the moment, working with the rest of the organising committee, meeting with sponsors, training volunteers and finalising venues for November's tournament.
"Yeah we hope to have 10 countries: England, Scotland, Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and the West Indies," Goodacre said before his departure.
"The only country that won't be there, unfortunately, is New Zealand because we don't have cricket in the Special Olympics programme here. The players are intellectually disabled students or athletes we've come from special schools or institutions.
"We've had huge help from the governing cricket body in India and also their number one sports patron, Kapil Dev. We all remember him here obviously from his jousts with Richard Hadlee over the years, and he immediately came forward to help, and we're also expecting a number of the India test players at the opening ceremony and some of the matches.
"At the opening ceremony we had for the Asia-Pacifiable last time, we had 35,000 people in the stadium in Ahmedabad, as well as a live TV audience, all there to watch intellectually disabled people play cricket. It just blew us away totally.
"The Prime Minister was there, the minister for sport was there and we had India's international umpiring representative organise first class umpires for us. You could never do that in New Zealand. You'd never get Billy Bowden and all his group coming along to do Special Olympics cricket.
"But in India, yes, you can ask for that kind of assistance and the chances are, because it's cricket, they'll do it."
Goodacre is the kind of bloke who seems pretty enthusiastic about most things. But as you hear him talk and see the gleam in his eye, you can see just how close the cause of helping intellectually disabled people is to his heart.
His involvement stretches back more than 20 years now, starting at Hastings level, then national and now international.
"I must say, there are very few negatives to the job," he said.
"We don't get any negative comments, the athletes love doing the sports, the parents are behind us, sponsors enjoy it - it's all positive. It can be difficult, because you're competing against regular sport, except that in India and Pakistan, getting sponsors for cricket isn't as hard as you might think."