Surrey CCC and Lord’s Taverners donate high-quality bats to Rwanda Cricket Association (RCA)

Surrey CCC have teamed up with Lord’s Taverners to donate a number of high-quality bats to the Rwanda Cricket Association (RCA).

The bats were originally donated as part of the Lord’s Taverners Kit Donation Programme before being sent to Rwanda via Surrey CCC’s ongoing partnership with the charity Cricket Builds Hope. They will be used by the Rwanda national teams as they continue to develop and seek qualification for ICC events.

They had their first use during a recent 3-2 series victory over Malawi, a tournament played as a warm up to the biggest event of the men’s teams’ year in Rwanda, the sub-regional qualifiers for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. In this tournament, hosted in Kenya, Rwanda will compete alongside the hosts as well as Gambia, Mozambique, Seychelles and Zimbabwe for the right to advance to full African qualifying next year, the top two nations going through.

The partnership between Surrey and CBH, originally started in 2015, has seen an international standard ground built in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, that has since staged major qualifiers for ICC global T20 events, including last week’s African qualifiers for the ICC U19 Women’s World Cup that were won by Nigeria, their maiden qualification for any ICC event.

As well as this, the ground plays host to a regular calendar of domestic cricket, programmes helping to continue the development of the sport in the east African nation and a female empowerment programme for women in the Gahanga region of Kigali where the ground is based, which is funded by Surrey CCC.

Jon Surtees, Head of Community, Public Affairs and Projects at Surrey CCC, said: “Surrey’s partnership with Cricket Builds Hope, working with them as they support the Rwanda Cricket Association to grow the game, is something everyone at the club can be really proud of.

“It’s wonderful to see the game growing so organically in East Africa and we will do everything we can support that and really put cricket at the heart of the African sporting map.”

Originally a Belgian colony with no cricketing culture, the sport arrived in Rwanda in the late 1990s, brought back by Rwandans who had been displaced by the genocide that took place in the country in 1994. They had taken refuge in countries including Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, where they learnt about the sport.

Returning home, they wanted to continue playing but discovered there was only one ground in the country, with poor facilities. In 2011, Cricket Builds Hope was founded with a mission to raise money to build a new ground in Kigali.

Surrey partnered with CBH in 2015, donating money to assist in the construction of the ground – located in Gahanga in the south east of Kigali – and helping create further links between Rwandan cricket and the ICC. The Club has also teamed up with CBH to host an annual Carol Service at St. Mark’s Church in Kennington, which will again be hosted this year.

The ground in Kigali opened in 2017, with a celebrity match that saw players including Michael Vaughan and Sam Billings forced to don Surrey kit whilst playing at the stadium!

Club staff, including deputy head of The Oval groundstaff Martin Biggin, have also visited Rwanda to help maintain the ground and train staff. Most recently, Matt Williams (Venue Operations and Security Manager), Josh Macvean (Conference and Events Sales Executive), Chris Morris (Club Support Officer) and Jack Colyer (Groundsperson) visited Rwanda in October 2023, donating kit and equipment, working with staff at the ground and supporting the RCA to help develop new clubs in the country.

Rwanda’s cricketing peak, so far, was when their U19 women’s team qualified for the inaugural U19 Women’s World Cup in January 2023, ultimately reaching the Super Six phase and recording wins over West Indies and Zimbabwe, as well as playing against Pakistan and England for the first time in their history.

There are now 24 cricket clubs in Rwanda and the game is played in more than 100 Rwandan schools. It is equally popular with both girls and boys as Rwandans have never considered it a gendered sport. Given its lack of history in the country before 1994, it is also considered an excellent vehicle for the country’s ongoing reconciliation process following the events of 1994.