The story of Mali's cricket team is a lesson in looking beyond the headline

SAM MORSHEAD: It's quite easy to cast aspersions from the comforts of home, based on opinions formed from scorecards. Behind those unusual numbers, however, is a human tale. A tale about daughters of conflict, a tale of freedom and ambition

You’ve probably heard the story about Mali Women that’s been doing the rounds of late.

You’ve probably had a giggle.

Some of you might have made disparaging remarks about how they shouldn’t be playing ‘international’ cricket, or questioned whether a series of such emphatic defeats is more likely to damage the development of the game in French western Africa than give it a shot in the arm.

It’s quite easy to cast aspersions from the comforts of home, based on opinions formed from scorecards. Behind those unusual numbers, however, is a human tale. A tale about daughters of conflict, many of whom were representing their country for the first time. A tale of initiative - of the Malian and the Welshman who founded a cricket federation in a nation where there are no shops that sell bats and no grounds on which to use them. A tale of freedom and ambition way beyond the simplicity of being bowled out for six, or shipping 314 for 2 in 20 overs.

The story begins in 2001, and a conversation between Kawory Berthe - a teacher at the Kalanso School in Mali’s capital city Bamako - and Violet Diallo, the Inverness-born British consul general to the country at the time.

Berthe, an English teacher, had gone to the consulate to discuss how he might best encourage his students to learn the language, and as it so happened, Diallo had that week received an email from Sri Lankan lawyer Mahendra Mapagunaratne proposing the introduction of the sport in regions of west Africa.

The Malian captain receives the fair play trophy at the Kwibuka Tournament

“I had no idea what cricket was at all,” Berthe told The Cricketer.

“But I took the email and brought it to my school, and summoned a meeting with the headteachers.”

Luckily for Berthe, among the school population at the time were four British children.

Their father, Phil Watson, who grew up in Hawerden, not far from Chester, was collared in the playground and asked to help.

“He jumped with joy,” said Berthe. “He said ‘this is what I was looking for’. At that moment, cricket started.”

Watson taught the teachers, the teachers introduced the game to the children and soon Berthe was beginning to see a groundswell.

“Cricket is so exciting, so addictive,” he says. “Everybody wanted to join.”

So popular did the sport prove to be, Berthe and his colleagues began considering how to export it across Bamako. The national government would only sign off on a governing body for cricket if it was available in more than one region. Undeterred, Berthe and Co pushed on.

Soon the game was being played in Segou, some 200km up the River Niger, and then Sikasso, five hours' drive from the capital in the south east of the country. It was there that, seven years after Berthe discovered cricket, Mali’s national championships were first held.

The reformed Federation Mali Cricket - FeMaCrick - were formally recognised by the ICC in 2005, and finally received governmental approval.

Within four years, Berthe and his team had turned their single-school club into a multi-city association.

Yet for all their successes, Malian cricket is still embryonic. Facilities are not so much limited as non-existent - training and matches have to take place on school playgrounds, football pitches and basketball courts when they are not in use. There is not, Berthe was at pains to explain during our conversation, a single bespoke cricket pitch in the entire country.

“We have been struggling since the beginning, asking our politicians to find us a place to play… but this is politicians,” he said.

“Two years ago when I sent a sponsorship request to a Pakistani company here, they told me they are ready to invest when (we) have a ground. If you don’t, we don’t know what you can do.

“If you don’t have a ground for yourself, it is not easy.”

The Uganda team which took Mali for 314 in 20 overs

An ESPNcricinfo report in 2010 claimed that FeMaCrick had acquired land on the banks of the Niger near Bamako city centre on which they planned to build a ground but Berthe says the plot is not big enough for anything more than office facilities and that the search continues.

An actual pitch is not the only challenge facing Mali as they continue tentatively on the international cricket pathway.

Securing the equipment needed to play a basic game is also a complicated and costly process.

Berthe buys much of the country’s kit online, using UK manufacturers, and has to pay inflated import costs as a result.

“There is no single store in Mali where you can find a cricket ball,” Berthe says.

Mali benefits from a modest ICC grant - in 2019 it was $16,000 for the calendar year - but otherwise income is very low and they are left to rely on the generosity of others.

The ICC have previously sent pitch mats, and in the federation’s early years brought level three coaches in from Nigeria to lead academy workshops, while FeMaCrick were notified this month of a comfort package which is due to arrive from Cricket Australia.

“The children love the game but the problem is material,” Berthe says.

He is hopeful that, as a result of a record 19 teams entering the national championships in April, the ICC will increase their grant next year. Otherwise, donations are what will keep the project afloat.

Amid that backdrop - and in a country riddled by division, fractured by war and living under the threat of terrorism since a 2012 coup - we come to events of recent weeks.

Mali sent a 14-woman squad to Rwanda to take part in the Kwibuka Tournament, a competition held in the memory of the girls lost to the horrific 1994 genocide. For 10 members of the group, it was their first trip as part of the international side, and only their second ever experience of any competitive cricket environment - their first having been in April.

Only three members of the side were over 20 years old, with the youngest - Balkissa Coulibaly - just 14. The government paid for the team's travel expenses but nothing more, the rest had to be sourced from FeMaCrick's meagre budget.

It was never meant to be more than a learning experience, a bonding experience, a way of introducing these women, and children, to the world of international cricket.

From a purely sporting perspective, what followed was a series of trouncings. Mali were bowled out for 6 by Rwanada, then 11 by Tanzania. They then conceded 314 for 2 against Uganda, despite limiting their opponents to just a single six, and their net run rate at the three-game mark was a shade under -15.

Berthe revealed that, midway through the tournament, he told his players he was thinking of withdrawing.

“The captain said ‘Mr President, we came for this game. We will play. Even if we have to die, we play’,” he explains.

Mali received the fair play trophy at the end of the competition, and there were tears among their ranks as they collected it.

“They don’t feel good about losing but they say it has been a school for us,” says Berthe.

“They said they will take lessons from this tournament and at home we can do it differently, so we can reach the level of the others.

“They feel very strongly about it. They said ‘we lost the battle but it is not the war’.

“They are very optimistic about the future.”

In their three remaining matches, the team reached scores of 30 for 9, 17 for 9 and 14.

Officially, Mali now hold world records no one really wants, much to the dismay of many statisticians.

But their players do not feel shame, nor embarrassment.

“The feeling they had really changed the way I thought,” Berthe says. “My first thought was to pull out because it was a shame for the country but they told me that they wanted to play.

“At first I felt bad about it, because it is like we have never ever played cricket but the lesson we learned from it is very helpful and our future will be better for it.”

The scorecard really doesn’t always tell the whole story.