'It's a very new sport in Oulu,' says club president Joose Kankare as he sets up the wickets for the first practice game. 'Our first meeting was just last week!' But he's sure that Finns will 'get into cricket. They like baseball and it's quite similar!' he laughs. 'I also think it's interesting because it's gonna bring different cultures together.'
There are, in fact, already 11 cricket clubs in Finland. They are mostly in Helsinki but there is one in Tampere and one in Turku. 'The Men's Thinking Society', based in Helsinki, was the first fully Finnish-run cricket club in the country. Other clubs include The Finnish Pakistani Club, The Bengal Tigers, Empire, FinnAsia and even a ladies' cricket club called 'Phoenix.'
But the fully Finnish Men's Thinking Society, naturally, stands in complete contrast to the diversity of Oulu's Cricket Club (OCC). Cricket enthusiasts not only from Finland but England, Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan begin to arrive. In all, about twenty men are ready for two hours of cricket on a Thursday evening (they also meet on Saturday afternoons) and despite the mild rain and ever-present mosquitos, they have an hour of practice followed by an hour long game. Cricket matches can last about five days but the men play 'non-stop cricket' which can be fitted into a far shorter time frame.
Members pay a yearly fee of 30 euros which covers the rent of the cricket equipment and other expenses. And if you want to just try cricket out without being a member, you can turn-up and, for 4 euros, take part in the practice session and a game. At the moment, the club plays with a tennis ball but they looking into getting hold of a proper cricket ball as fast as they can. Confident of its future, the club even allows you to join for life if you wish - for 150 euros your membership will only run out only when you do. There is also an end-of-season party for members to look forward to.
Jussi, 29, got what he calls the 'cricket bug' when he lived in Australia two years ago. 'My room mates played it all the time,' he recalled of his six months down under. 'And that's how I got into it and I wanted to carry on playing it when I got back to Finland.' He got together with two Indian friends and they began to plan the launch of some kind of cricketing organisation in the city.
Though there has been a small article about the club in an Oulu freebie newspaper, 'the club has mainly grown by word of mouth.' In fact, Kelvey, one of the English members and a teacher at the International School, only found out about it by intermittently googling the words 'cricket' and 'Oulu.'
The club members are certainly brimming with enthusiasm for the sport. 'I found out about this on the internet,' says Faisal, 29, a Business student at Oulu Polytechnic who comes from Lahore in Pakistan. 'It's great. I just love to play cricket.'
'Cricket is played very much in my country,' pipes up Bhargavi, a 25 year-old PhD student from Bangalore in India. 'And we are very competitive about it! I don't like the winter in Finland because I can't play cricket!'
Kelvey, 37, always played cricket at school and, having been living in Finland for seven years with his Finnish wife, was very happy to finally find a way of practicing his favourite sport. 'I always played cricket at school and just in the street!' he laughs. Though he admits that his cricket is not up to much when compared to his India and Pakistani club-mates. 'They're all so good at cricket!' he laughs. 'It's absolutely amazing.'
