CRICKET IN AUSTRIA

A different ball game - A South African in Austria

by Richard Asher • Last updated on

The Vienna Cricket Club © Cricbuzz

"Er spielt fur uns!" comes the repeated chirp from somewhere behind the stumps. Match situation? Vienna Cricket Club are struggling with their reply in a friendly against Indian Cricket Club Vienna. And yes, on a chilly, breeze-beaten field somewhere just north of Vienna, I'm being sledged in German.

"He's playing for us," my fellow non-Austrians are cackling, no doubt thinking this previously unseen player is a native Austrian newbie who'll need his mental disintegration served up in his own language.

Little do they know I'm actually South African, and my German's only just good enough to understand their barbs about my resolute blocking of their spinners. If they knew I'd grown up watching Darryl Cullinan and others getting blasted out by Warnie, and not so long ago got riveted by Faf du Plessis blocking out Nathan Lyon for a day to save a Test, they'd understand where I'm coming from. This is what South Africans do against spin.

The game is my first cricket match in Austria. It's less about making runs and more about taking in a wonderland I'd never have believed existed. When I moved here last autumn, after three years spent gorging myself on village cricket in Oxfordshire and Surrey, I assumed I was going to have to sacrifice my favourite pastime in favour of opera or cross-country skiing. But when Google wafted faint hope onto my computer screen shortly before departure, I cautiously threw my whites into the taking-to-Vienna pile.

I need hardly have bothered with the whites, it turns out. One of the first things I learned upon arrival was that the Austrian Cricket Association (ACA) had decreed that from 2017 its leagues would now be played in coloured clothing, with a white ball. Which meant I was quickly signing up for a set of yellows. I'm not the only purist who had a grumble about the whole thing during winter indoor nets at the Dominik-Hoffmann-Halle back in the city, where I first meet my new club-mates.

There's one part of this Easter Saturday cricket experience that isn't remotely new. The frosty breeze is enough to make the jumperless shiver. Replete with grey, moody skies, the day feels suspiciously like Easter cricket in England. The cold Wieselburger beers sitting in the fridge feel just a little bit optimistic.

But the other features of playing cricket at Seebarn, one of the two active adult grounds in Austria, are distinctly unfamiliar. Burg Kreuzenstein, a fantastical castle not dissimilar at first glance to Disneyland's, perches on a distant hilltop. And in another storybook twist, I soon learn that it belongs to an actual count. Not only that, but the honourable Count Wilczek, who actually learned cricket at the Lyceum Alpinum in Zuoz, Switzerland, also owns the ground we're playing on. It used to be one of his turnip fields.

Everywhere around lies the contradiction of spring. Bright daffodils peep through the thick layer of grass shavings left from the first pre-season mow. The row of trees at the Seebarn end is blooming green, but the ones on the knoll overlooking the ground still bear the gloomy hues of winter. Some of those surrounding fields are springing into life, too, a patchwork of colourful vegetation and lifeless brown soil. The Gasthaus in the village, one of the few human dwellings in sight from the middle, sports a mustard colour indifferent to the seasons. As I'll soon learn, it's a fine place to sample Austrian cuisine. And yes, schnitzel's on the menu...

The sightscreens are still white, which promises to be a problem when the league starts properly in a month's time. But the painter is coming in the week to do that which needs to be done. And we're fine for this friendly: white and red is enjoying one last hurrah at Austrian cricket's de facto HQ. Could we be making local sporting history?

It's no Lord's, though, even if it does elicit a double-take from every confused Austrian motorist who happens to pass by this alien scene for the first time. The basic clubhouse, square to the artificial wicket, consists of five shipping containers arranged in a C-Shape. The cricket slang 'sheds' is very apt here. There are chairs on the roof, which apparently come and go in the night thanks to persons unnamed.

Inside, I'm relieved to find it has warm, running water, along with a small fridge. It's as close to a functioning bar as Seebarn is going to get any time soon. There is a men's WC and - charmingly optimistic, again - a ladies. All the guys use both.

Parked outside the visitor's change-room (Vienna CC leases and runs Seebarn) is a tractor dating from 1955. I'd hazard a guess that it's a long time since it's done any grass-cutting (how did it get up the concrete steps, anyway?), but apparently she still fires up. At the subsequent AGM in Vienna's Cafe Wortner we learn that the treasurer, Helmuth (apparently a former breakdancing champion, no less), is going to head to an agricultural expo to see what it might fetch on the antique farm equipment market.

It was a late start today, thanks to a wet outfield. The topography of which is distinctly more varied than the dead-flat farmland surrounding it, most of which belongs to the cricket-friendly count as well. The landscape is simple in this part of Austria, which few people realise is nothing like the stuff of Alpine postcards: you're either on a low hill or you're on a plain. Seebarn's cricket ground sits on the edge of one such expanse of flatness, corn the crop of choice on three sides. It's going to be a nightmare to find boundary-clearing balls in there when the vegetation shoots up in the summer.

Once upon a time there used to be two grounds here. The main ground got up and running in 1995, before the second joined in 2001. Parallel games of cricket must have made for a festival vibe, but it was only three years before money dictated that ground number two had to be returned to the Austria's maize-lovers. Now, there's a necessarily packed schedule on the one remaining field, which hosts back-to-back ACA Open League (40 overs) and ACA Twenty20 matches most Saturdays and Sundays in the summer.

Seebarn, just north of Vienna. Pic taken from Vienna Cricket Club Facebook page ©Agencies

Vienna Indians is just one of the Vienna-based majority of clubs we'll be facing in the competitive season. Of Austria's 13 Open League teams, only Afghan Steiermark, the remarkable refugee side from Graz, and one team from Slovenia, hail from outside the capital. There's also a Salzburg squad in the 16-side T20 competition.

The Indians bat first and take (from our point of view) a terribly long time to lose a wicket on their way to 268 all out in 37 overs. 120 without loss after 20 proved the perfect platform. They have active Austria internationals in their side, to be fair - with Kunal Joshi making 83 and Armaan Randhawa (visiting home from England, where he plays for Sunbury) an instructive 76. A woeful, typically early-season fielding display helps them along.

At one point, our keeper and skipper, Quinton, gets a ball in the eye as Basildon-born leg-spinner Owen dislodges the bails with his first delivery. For a moment we fear a Mark Boucher scenario, but thankfully he's soon up and about again. But it sets the tone for a string of injuries in VCC ranks this season.

At the close of innings comes what I consider far and away the most critical difference to England: there's no mouthwatering tea buffet. Everyone has brought their own food: bananas, sandwiches, Pringles in the curious paprika flavour that holds sway wherever you go in the German-speaking world. There's highly-rated subcontinental mango, too, thanks to our Rajasthani veteran Pushi Ranawat. I wish I'd known you had to bring lunch. Fortunately, my kindly team-mates share: there's not so much as a corner store for miles around. Even the city isn't much good at corner shops, come to think of it.

Our reply does indeed boil down to batting practice, although having Erwin Grasinger at the other end is an education in hopeful strike rotation. The outfield is sluggish and he seems to be the fittest man in the world. I later learn that making people run is his actual job! My batting partner played many years for Austria, and was just about the last native to play for his country when he called time on the international stuff in 2013. I might be huffing and puffing, but batting with Erwin gives the experience an Austrian twist you can't always count on. So too does the occasional genau or unbedingt thrown into the Hindi (chirps aside) going on around me.

We're never in the hunt. Pushi gets a bat at the end, and even the opposition smile when he picks up a few runs. And they certainly don't try all that hard to run the lovable senior out. It is a friendly, after all.

***

'Das Hauptspiel des Obergymnasiums war und blieb Cricket.' Loose translation: Cricket has been our primary sport. Of all the places to unearth this particular line, a school yearbook from small-town Austria in the 1890s is an unlikely one. But more than one source shows that the game was taken pretty seriously at the German-medium Baden Obergymnasium in Baden bei Wien at that time.

This unusual development in the spa resort 40km south of the capital, it would seem, was thanks to one Ludwig Lechner, a teacher with a penchant for introducing foreign sports ranging from rugby to rounders to tug-of-war. And with the foundation of the Vienna Cricket Club - by the inevitable group of ex-pat Englishmen - in 1892, they actually had somebody to play against. 1893's clash between the two sides, on the school's Sportplatz, appears to have been the first documented cricket match in Austria.

Reports show that 'the English' won the game by an innings and then some. A similar result came to pass a year later. That game was meant to have been played in Vienna's Prater park, but a washout saw the 'return' match moved to Baden.

While cricket at the school has long since been consigned to dusty yearbooks, that club they played against still exists in the Prater. But things have changed. Now known as the Vienna Cricket and Football Club, it's an almost admirable anomaly of modern Vienna (and a nightmare for anybody googling somewhere to play cricket in Austria) that they don't actually do cricket. Or football, come to think of it.

Nowadays, all that Austria's original cricket club offers is a bit of athletics and tennis. And despite the name it bore pre-1894, there's really no relationship to the Vienna Cricket Club I'm playing for over a hundred years later.

Vienna CC in action. Pic taken from Vienna Cricket Club Facebook page ©Agencies

The nets at Velden are out of commission right now. But that's okay, we've been warming up for today's game since yesterday afternoon! First, by diving off the pier and trying to catch a taped-up tennis ball as each of us leapt into the so-clean-you-could-bottle-it waters of the Faaker See. And later, by cautiously nurdling a real cricket ball between the Alpine-style wooden huts of the shoreline Hotel Dorf in which we're staying. At least until we had a run-in with a grumpy mother, whose baby apparently didn't appreciate the sound of leather on willow.

Whatever happens today, it's going to be enjoyable. As I would imagine might be the case at Dharamsala or Newlands, even standing idle at third man is time well spent. Nestled at the edge of a village in the southern reaches of Carinthia, Velden offers an unlikely vista for a cricket field: jagged peaks, wooded foothills and, closer to the boundary, the odd Catholic shrine standing proud amongst farmlands. The border with Slovenia runs along the top of these Karawanken Mountains, and in the distance you can see the highway that plunges through them towards Ljubljana.

That's exactly where today's opposition are coming from, and this morning the tunnel's apparently been backed up for miles. Ljubljana Cricket Club, who have a long tradition of playing in the Austrian leagues, are taking us on in a Twenty20 match at their adopted home ground. It'll be a late start, then, but nobody's too concerned. Unlike at Seebarn, there's no following match to worry about. We'll play again tomorrow, against Afghan Steiermark, in part two of the annual mini-tour to the deep south.

Despite its rural location, and the fact that from this year CC Velden 91 no longer enters a competitive league team, this place has far more of a cricket-club field than Seebarn does. There's a spotless clubhouse with a perfectly acceptable bar, and a solid smattering of cricket memorabilia on the walls: MCC and the Crusaders - not to mention regular Kent visitors Beechwood CC - have all been here.

Outside, waiting batsmen can hide from the sun beneath what might be the largest umbrella I've ever seen. They've just laid a new artificial pitch, which Velden veterans agree is a substantial improvement on the one that went before. But the long and gory tradition of feathers on the batting surface remains. Documented as long ago as 2006 in Angus Bell's Slogging the Slavs, it seems the local birds still consider the middle of the cricket ground their favoured spot for a bit of deadly gladiating.

When we finally get going - green versus yellow under perfect blue skies - the Slovenes register 182/7 in their 20 overs. It proves to be more than enough, despite 48 from Mark Simpson-Parker, son of Lancashire-born Andrew, the former England age group player everyone seems to agree is the finest batsman ever to have worn Austrian colours. Quinton, a Durbanite who played with Kevin Pietersen long enough ago to recall him as a spinner bowler who batted a bit, scores second-best with 35.

The next day we're back, having checked out of the Hotel Dorf - no doubt to the relief of the baby - with extra focus on our Open League clash following the previous day's 34-run defeat. We're not only carrying a ton of cricket gear, but a host of injuries too: a gash on the ear (wear a helmet, Suraj!), a serious case of split webbing for our guesting Crusader, James, and a dramatic, gigantic graze along the side for Simson-Parker Jr after he went down in his follow-through. Velden isn't just dangerous for birds, it seems.

Batting gets off to a great start on another flawless day, even though we can't get the box containing scoreboard numbers unlocked until we're a few overs in. We make do with hanging our numbered shirts on the board each time the score happens to match them. James makes 88, which won't do the good relationship between VCC and Swan Richards' Aussie touring club any harm. The Melbourne side has been over to Austria four times in total - it started out as a stopover in the hub of their then-sponsors Lauda Air - with the likes of Andrew Finch, David Hussey, Andrew McDonald, Clint McKay all having played in Austria on their road to the top. Ross Taylor was here too, albeit in MCC colours.

"If you ever want to give David Hussey some stick, remind him about the only ball he ever faced in Austria," grins Erwin, who actually did a stint with the Crusaders over in Australia, as did fellow VCC man Tim Simpson. "He ran down the track and got stumped off a wide!"

We total 243/7 and reduce Afghan Steiermark to 87/6 at one point, before encountering annoying resistance from their lower order and number four bat Habib Ahmadzai. In the end, the job is done by 55 runs, though, as Habib falls just short of a ton. Daniel Eckstein, fresh off the plane from helping Austria to fourth place in the ICC World Cricket League Europe Division 1 in the Netherlands, leads the attack with four wickets.

***

The narrative of Austrian cricket follows a similar path to that of most European countries. An expat-driven flurry in the 1800s, followed by several decades of total shutdown, in other words. Pushi, who came to Vienna in 1970 on the back of a Jesuit education in India that left him better-versed in basketball and baseball than cricket, recalls how the game's Austrian revival began in that decade.

"I used to eat at an Indian restaurant called Maharajah, and the owner there sponsored a cricket team called Five Continents Cricket Club, which started around the same time. But you were just lucky if you found out about cricket back then. The biggest problem was finding grounds. We played on the Jahnwiese in the Augarten, or on hockey fields in the Prater."

Around the same time, Australian teacher Kerry Tattersall established VCC, while the late Brian Lewis started the United Nations Cricket Club (UNCC). With Seebarn still a long way off, they too had to make do with cricketing in thoroughly unsuitable locales, like the Papstwiese, a free-for-all city park in which angry confrontations with dog walkers were par for the course.

In its very first match on October 25, 1975, VCC took on the Australian Embassy on the Jahnwiese, in the shadow of the hulking concrete tower thrown up by the Nazis, which still stands today. Here's the delightful report, handwritten and signed 'I.W.A'.

'Vienna Cricket Club acquitted itself very well on its first match, losing to the Australian Embassy by only 23 runs. The Australians batted first and were soon in trouble against Wiesmuller who took two early wickets - one being a particularly fine caught and bowled. They recovered, however, mainly due to Townsend who scored a forceful 27.

The Australians were also helped in the later stages by Wiesmuller who bowled many wides (Extras with 29 was the top scorer!). If he could only learn to be less erratic he would become a very good bowler. Schwarzkopf, too, must be mentioned for a very good display as wicket-keeper. Vienna's innings started very badly - there being two extremely silly run outs. A forceful display of hitting by Kasper - including an enormous hit for six - momentarily raised hopes, but the side was eventually all out for 70 - 23 runs behind the Embassy. If so many extras had not been given away, the side would have in fact won - the bowlers must be less erratic and the fielders sharper and the running between wickets better if the side wants to win matches! And they can, for they have the potential!'

While I've heard nothing about the current Australian Embassy raising a team, Five Continents, VCC and UNCC have lived on. They're now the grand old clubs (if not the most successful) of the modern Austrian cricket scene. It took until 1981 for the ACA to be formed (Tattersall, the founder), and only in 1991 did the Open League begin. Then came Seebarn, which went on to host a handful of European tournaments (along with the inner-city ground at Markomannenstrasse and Velden, which Velden CC 91 had laid out in 1997) in the early-to-mid 2000s.

"Where we're sitting now used to be a huge barn with a tractor and some hay," says Pushi, recalling an earlier Seebarn clubhouse incarnation as we wait to bat one afternoon in May. "In the summer of 1995, there was a huge storm, and I was the only one with a car. We had to get our kit out in a hurry, because it looked like it was going to collapse. And it did!"

Colloquially known by its Markomannenstrasse street address but amusingly described as the 'Austria Cricket Stadium' by Google Maps, the second ground serving Vienna's cricketers came along in 2002. That was courtesy of another name that keeps on popping up when you talk modern Austrian cricket history: Sri Lankan Siva Nadarajah. Along with the likes of Simpson-Parker Sr, he did much to try and coach the game in local schools. He also established Concordia CC after breaking away from Vienna CC. Nadarajah - apparently never one to back down in an argument - has left a big mark on the game here.

Markomannenstrasse - absolutely not named after long-standing Ljubljana CC member Mark Oman, I'm told - has long since been considered too small and too close to windows for adult league cricket. But Austria Cricket Club Vienna, the side descended from Concordia CC, still train there. They remain VCC's number one rivals.

Vienna CC in action. Pic taken from Vienna Cricket Club Facebook page ©Agencies

On a muggy, overcast evening a couple of weeks ago, Pushi takes me on a trip down his own cricketing memory lane. We visit the hockey field in the Prater where big hitters like Siva broke many a clubhouse window. Apart from the astroturf that rang the death knell for cricket here in the mid-90s, it's all exactly as he remembers it, but those riding the miniature Liliputbahn train through the Prater would know nothing of the cricketing ghosts that haunt this place.

We drive on to the Donauinsel, a 21-kilometre-long man-made island that splits the Danube in two. We look for more ghosts at the curious Bertha von Suttner school-on-a-boat, the unusual venue for the European Indoor Cricket Championship in 1995. There can't be many other boats in the world that can claim to have played host to competitive cricket, but there's no allusion to it in the deserted sports hall today.

When we step back outside and look up, there's a remarkable surprise: live cricket. By sheer chance, an unidentified Indian team is playing a practice match in the centre of a typically unkempt patch of Donauinsel Park. While Hundertwasser's zany tower across the water at Spittelau gleams gold in the setting sun and tells you this is indubitably Austria, bowlers are charging in with a red tennis ball, really giving it some. Batting doesn't look easy, what with the two-metre belt of gravel running across the pitch, and a brace of wickets tumble while we watch. We came here to muse over cricket nostalgia, and instead an actual game has just shown up announced. You couldn't make it up.

Our last stop is Markomannenstrasse, hidden amongst the residential sprawl in the depths of the 22nd district. There's just time to take a couple of snaps of the towering fences that (sometimes) keep cricket balls out of the street before a suspicious lady with a dog tells us she's about to lock the gate following ACCV's just-finished practice session. She speaks in a strong, meaty Viennese dialect, which makes the idea of her being responsible for a specialist cricket field all the more incongruous.

Just a few days later, no less a star than Mohammad Hafeez visits the same ground. He's guest of honour as the Switzerland girls team defeat their Austrian counterparts. Little-known in these parts, I'm not convinced the lady with the dog would have given him any special privileges when it came to gate-locking time.

Games on an island in the middle of the Danube, double-headers in the shadow of a count's castle every weekend, Pakistani test openers visiting Vienna...there's cricket all over the place in Austria. If you only know where to look.

But, as with almost every European country, the number of native players has declined markedly. Grasinger was lucky to learn his unlikely habit from Simpson-Parker, whose wife happened to teach at his school in Vienna.

"The early to mid 1990s was the peak for Austrian native players," he says. "I had a soft path into the game but that doesn't exist any more. In the 1990s there used to be an Austrian Championship, primarily for native players. So there was a structure to see that they wouldn't come into cricket and get crushed. But of course, the national team is far stronger now!"

One of the most popular - and silly - tourist t-shirts you can buy in this part of the world plays on a popular geographical misunderstanding with its 'No Kangaroos in Austria' line. This time last year, I'd have forgiven its creators for pondering something similar involving cricketers. I couldn't have been more wrong. And while it might not be exactly home-cooked, you can even get a spot of mental disintegration here too.

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