Nepal's kindness must now be repaid

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Aside from their mutual passion for cricket and birth dates 26 years ago that were separated by three weeks, there were few common threads to bind the late Phillip Hughes with Sunam Gautam.

Hughes was a batting prodigy whose progress to the global stage seemed pre-destined from the time he quit his final year of school to begin an apprenticeship in Sydney grade ranks, with enough faith in his innate ability to believe the game would yield him a livelihood until such time as he returned to the family farm.

Gautam grew up in the heart of Nepal’s densely-crowded, smog-enshrouded Kathmandu Valley, where his similar aspirations to forge a career in cricket saw him represent his country at under-19 level as a handy middle-order batsman and off-spin bowler of slightly less renown.

But despite their nation’s fanatical passion for cricket that was born out of their powerful southern neighbour India’s 1983 World Cup triumph and has spiked ever higher through the roll-out of cable television and the IPL, Nepal’s cricketers require lives beyond sport to keep their families in food.

Thus it was economic pragmatism ahead of cricket that led Gautam to Melbourne in pursuit of a Bachelor of Sports Management, where he also found a place in the Footscray-Edgewater team as it blazed an eventual path to the 2013-14 Victorian Premier League flag.

Sunam Gautam after the VPL final win

But having missed out on the grand final XI after ex-Test player John Hastings became available for the play-off, Gautam was settling into his first summer with his new VPL outfit the Greenvale Kangaroos when the news of Hughes’s injury and subsequent death stunned the world.

So moved was the Nepali student by the depth of the shock and the scale of the ‘put out your bats’ tributes that mourned the passing of a player he had admired from a distance but had never met, Gautam contacted the Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) to explore ways they could pay their respects.

“We were chatting on Twitter and discussing the event that had happened and then he (Gautam) mentioned that perhaps we could have a 63-over match in Nepal as a charity fund(raiser),” CAN’s Chief Executive Bhawana Ghimire recalled.

“I gave it a couple of hours of brainstorming and then came up with the expedition (to honour Hughes at the summit of Mount Everest) and the whole idea came.

“Once (the idea) was finalised step by step it became an exhibition match followed by the expedition, and then I wrote to Cricket Australia.”

Amid the tide of goodwill that swamped Australian cricket at that unprecedented time, it was the sincerity and the originality of CAN’s gesture – to stage a match and then honour Hughes atop the world - that stood out.

As CA Chairman Wally Edwards admits, “it brought a tear to our eyes”.

That a nation that did not grace the world cricket stage until 1996 (the same time it became engulfed in a 10-year civil war) and was only bestowed formal international T20 status in 2013 was driven to stage a meaningful honour to a fallen player from a rival country spoke loudly of Nepal’s commitment to the cricket community.

That a country which ranks below Afghanistan in terms of annual GDP and even less in the realm of cricket infrastructure could conceive, organise, promote and deliver a poignantly successful 63-over Phillip Hughes Tribute Match in Kathmandu in the space of four months says so much more.

The unique 16-players-per-team, 31.3-overs-per-innings match drew more than 5,000 animated fans who crammed the grassy banks of Kathmandu’s sole suitable cricket venue at Tribhuvan University, with thousands more gathered on surrounding rooftops and hillsides to steal a glimpse above the ground’s stone perimeter wall.

Newspaper, online and television journalists squeezed under the colourful canopies alongside the pavilion that hosted players the calibre of former Australia Test opener Matthew Elliott, NSW and Sydney Sixes batsman Ryan Carters and Nepali stars Binod Das, Paras Khadka and Shakti Gauchan.

And while the final outing of national captain Das was undoubtedly a drawcard for many looking to acknowledge his 15-year contribution, a reverent respect to the undoubted talent and the unfulfilled promise of Phillip Hughes hung palpably in the still, summer air.

Nepal is home to a genuine, vibrant cricket culture with an acute appreciation of the game’s celebrated past and sufficient self-awareness to appreciate the country’s journey to write itself into that story will require significant investment and involve no few setbacks.

But those challenges have now increased 100-fold with the cataclysmic 7.8 magnitude earthquake and violent aftershocks that shook the Himalayan country two weeks after cricket had engrossed it, rightly shifting domestic and worldwide focus from sport to survival.

For those Tribute Match guests welcomed and feted by CAN - led by its dynamic new CEO Ghimire – and captivated by the people and sights of Kathmandu, the news of the tragedy and the scenes of devastation have replicated the shock and distress felt five months earlier.

"God saved me, it was God"

Chhurim Sherpa, record-breaking climber // Getty Images

Nepal’s record-breaking climber Chhurim Sherpa who, despite cheerily conceding little knowledge of cricket having grown up in the yak-grazing, mountain village of Ghunsa near the Tibet border, was but a few hours trek from Mount Everest Base Camp when the quake triggered a deadly avalanche.

In the kit she had packed for her third ascent of the planet’s highest peak, the 31-year-old had included a Kookaburra bat and two shirts (a Test and an ODI issue) that had belonged to Hughes, with their arrival at the world’s roof to mark the high point of Nepal’s tribute to the cricketer.

Thoughts with all in Nepal & esp Chhurim Sherpa who was embarking on trek up Everest where huge avalanche has hit pic.twitter.com/rjOaiDWs3k — Andrew Ramsey (@ARamseyCricket) April 25, 2015

For a day or more, it was feared Chhurim and the trekking party she was guiding were among the 19 killed and many more injured when huge rocks and shards of glacial ice tore through the nylon tents and terrified trekkers huddled at the foot of the mountain, in the thin air 5km above sea level.

But she made contact with CAN a day after the earthquake to report she, her group and her cargo were safe.

“God saved me, it was God,” Chhurim recounted down a faltering phone line from Gorak Shep the mountain settlement immediately below Base Camp.

It was a fleeting moment of welcome news as the confirmed death toll rose beyond 8,000, as hospitals and field medics were stretched beyond their rudimentary capacities, as entire villages and suburbs lay in piles, and as Nepal’s economic and social future became as clouded as Kathmandu’s thickly polluted air.

The city of around one million covering barely 50 square kilometres had been the scene of vibrant, joyous celebrations of Nepalese New Year three days after the Phillip Hughes Tribute Match.

Families flocked to promenade past, gather inside and gaze upon the dozen and more historic temples that dot Kathmandu’s historic and spiritual heart, Durbar (Palace) Square that was fastidiously rebuilt after a previous earthquake in 1934 and 45 years later listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Today, Durbar Square remains a desolate scene of toppled bricks and debris-strewn terraces, with priceless artefacts hurled aside in the frenzied search for people buried beneath and intricately carved wooden beams and window screens dragged away as heating fuel for those who have lost their homes.

From even before Kathmandu became the essential tune-out, drop-in happy hippie retreat of the 1960s, the Nepalese have been eulogised the world over for their gentle, welcoming nature.

Royal city in ruins

Nepal's Prime Minister extends his condolences on Richie Benaud's passing to CA Chair Wally Edwards in Kathmandu pic.twitter.com/B59N9V4jUG — Andrew Ramsey (@ARamseyCricket) April 10, 2015

Edwards and his wife Kerry, who attended the Tribute Match representing CA, were delighted to be met on their travels by a would-be guide who offered to inform their exploration of the narrow, cobbled alleyways and restored antiquities of Bhaktapur, 8km from the centre of Kathmandu.

Not entirely by their eager friend’s knowledge of the medieval city that was a favourite evening and weekend retreat for countless city dwelllers, but also the man’s unprompted dissertation on “the world’s number one ODI bowler Mitchell Starc” who had assumed that ranking barely a week earlier.

A fortnight later and the grand buildings that granted Bhaktpaur, Nepal’s former royal capital, international renown as a centrepiece of the tourist trade so crucial to the nation’s financial health, are largely gone.

Nepal sustained enormous damage in the earthquake // Getty Images

The labyrinth of streets that bustled with local children, restaurant patrons, guest houses and artist colonies came to resemble a combat zone, while the historic city’s once busy squares continue to host seething tent refuges and mounting anxieties.

That scene is replicated on a tragically larger and more distressing scale at Tundikhel Park, the former military parade ground turned grassy recreation area in the centre of Kathmandu that became home to around 150,000 of the city’s displaced.

On the day after the Tribute Match, Tundikhel had hosted the final of the inaugural Kathmandu Cricket League Trophy 50-over competition which also drew big crowds to the park that – rather like Mumbai’s Oval Maidan – caters for countless social cricket matches on evenings and weekends.

As part of grand final day’s trophy presentations, Sunam Gautam was named batsman of the KCL series due in no small part to the 179 he smashed from 83 balls (with 23 fours and seven sixes) in his role as opener for the SS Event Cricket Team a week earlier.

Gautam, the man who had proposed the unique tribute for a fallen comrade who held no direct ties with Nepal for no reason other than he believed it was heartfelt and human to do something, had made a trip home for another chance to play the game he, along with so many Nepalis, adores.

Sunam Gautam with David Warner // Getty Images

He did not take part in the match that his idea had launched and which, until the catastrophic events of April 25, was scheduled to become an annual event with strong bilateral support from Australia.

But the future of cricket, let alone a celebratory fixture that Gautam and so many other passionate devotees of the game in Nepal had hoped might prove a springboard to greater global presence and recognition, quickly took a back seat to essential human needs.

Shelter, water, food, utility services. The bedrock of functional neighbourhoods.

It’s not known when, or if Kathmandu will again resemble the city that Gautam left as a young man to pursue his career and cricket ambitions.

It may not happen in his lifetime.

The rebuild of homes and lives is simply too vast.

The pain and stress, compounded by more than 50 sizeable aftershocks including another 7.3 magnitude earthquake on May 12 that killed more than 200 survivors of the initial disaster, still too raw.

It is for that reason, amid innumerable others, that the global cricket community which Nepal was so quick and so willing to embrace during its darkest days last November must now throw its collective arms around a young sibling in such deep, desperate need.

If you want to donate to help Nepal rebuild, we recommend doing so through Care Australia.