THE world is now deep in the grips of ICC 2015 Cricket World Cup fever, as the best nations on Earth battle it out in Australia and New Zealand to be named champion for another four years.
At current standings New Zealand, Australia and India have shown strong early form as centuries of development and technical training pay off for the world’s cricketing powerhouses.
Despite the World Cup flying relatively under the radar in many of the Pacific Islands, the hype surrounding the event is hardly surprising.
The game of cricket can be traced back deep into the history books of the 1500s, with suspected references made in England as early as the 1300s.
Cricket has also cemented its place as the national sport of India, a nation of over 1 billion, Bangladesh, a nation of 150 million and Australia, whose population of only 22 million is greatly enhanced by a world-renowned passion and strength in sporting endeavors.
At the Cricket World Cup heavyweights clashed in Australia and New Zealand, the Cricket Fiji U19’s side created history by winning the U19 Cricket World Cup Qualifying tournament in Blenheim, on the South Island of New Zealand.
An historic win over red-hot favorites and defending champions Papua New Guinea, second favorites Vanuatu and Samoa has put Fiji through to the ICC U19 Cricket World Cup for the first time.
This was also the first time in history a PNG U19’s side had been beaten in the East Asia-Pacific region, and the first time any Cricket Fiji team has beaten a PNG side since 2001.
Fijian Cricket has come a long way in recent world rankings, but in terms of it’s place in Fijian society is still considered a minnow to the almost religious following of rugby.
In the past year alone the national men’s team moved from an unranked position, to the 40th ranked team amongst the 104 cricketing nations worldwide.
No mean feat for a nation of only 900,000 citizens.
Cricket Fiji will also head over to Europe later in the year to battle it out in the World Cricket League division 6 competition, with the chance to move up into the worlds top 30 teams.
This, along with securing former head coach of Bangladesh, and former bowling coach of New Zealand Shane Jurgensen as Fijian national coach for three years, will ensure Cricket Fiji move swiftly into the sights of the top cricketing nations and into all corners of the Islands.
It seems then that the 2015 Cricket World Cup has come along at an opportune time for the sport, as Fiji TV and Sky Pacific continue to roll matches packed with parochial crowds onto television sets across the Fiji Islands.
Even Pacific Islanders found it hard not to be swept up in the excitement as India and South Africa played in Melbourne, away from home soil, and attracted a deafening record crowd of 86,876.
In 2016, the Cricketing world will turn it’s gaze to the ICC U19 Cricket World Cup, to which Fiji will make a maiden birth and enter Fijian sporting history books, making up one of the sixteen competing nations.
For a team mostly made up of Lau Island boys from Moce, Lakeba, Oneata, Komo and Ono-I-Lau, playing the worlds best from Australia, India and New Zealand would show just how far the sport of Cricket has come in Fiji.
