In a Beirut parking lot, migrant workers cheer as their teams face off in a cricket tournament, a moment of respite in crisis-hit Lebanon, where working conditions are often tough.
“Sunday we are so happy... We eat together, we laugh together,” said Pradeepa Silva, a 42-year-old Sri Lankan, as she and her teammates prepared coconut rice and other traditional food nearby to share.
“Work is very tiring” and workers are stressed and worried, said Silva, who is employed as a housemaid six days a week and pays for her daughter’s university studies back home.
Photo: AFP
Every Sunday, players mainly from Sri Lanka, but also from the Philippines, India and Pakistan, gather in Beirut’s Ashrafieh neighborhood to play cricket — a little-known sport in Lebanon.
Migrant workers are employed under Lebanon’s controversial “kafala” sponsorship system, which rights groups have repeatedly denounced saying that it enables a wide range of abuses.
On May 19, several hundred people gathered for a tournament that also brought together traditional food stalls, a DJ playing Bollywood hits and other music, teams from the British and Sri Lankan embassies and young Syrian refugee players.
Photo: AFP
Iris Sagario from the Philippines ran onto the field for the Roaring Lions women’s team, wearing an orange and blue shirt with her name printed on the back.
“I love cricket,” said the 43-year-old, who works as a housekeeper. “I’m very excited to play every Sunday” — her only day off.
After winning their match, Sagario’s team broke out into cheers, hugging and high-fiving each other. They went on to take the women’s trophy.
More than 160,000 migrants from 84 nationalities were in Lebanon last year, a report from the UN’s International Organisation for Migration said.
With daily bombardment in south Lebanon as Hezbollah and the Israeli army clash amid tensions over the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, some foreign embassies have advised their nationals to leave the country.
“At first I was worried” but “my sir [employer] assured me that all is good,” said Sagario, who was also in Lebanon in 2006, when Israel and Hezbollah last went to war.
“I’m choosing to stay because ... I don’t know what I’ll do if I go back to the Philippines. I want to give financial [help] to my family,” she said.
Curious passersby sometimes peered over a tumbledown stone wall to watch the matches.
Organizer Fernando Sugath, 52, from Sri Lanka said some players have nicknamed the parking lot they have been using for about two decades the “Lord’s of Lebanon,” a reference to the famous Lord’s cricket ground in London.
Migrant workers at the cricket match “are very lucky that they’ve got some good employers who give them the Sunday off”, said Sugath, who first moved to Lebanon in 1996 as a cleaner and is now an administrative assistant.
Rights groups have long criticized Lebanon’s restrictive sponsorship system, saying it facilitates exploitation and leaves migrant workers at the mercy of their employers, amid persistent reports of physical and sexual abuse, unpaid wages and long work hours.
Sugath appealed to all employers to give workers “at least one hour, two hours off on Sunday... Let them have some freedom, let them use the phone, call their families.”
As the men’s competition began, big hitters began smashing the ball into the trees lining the parking lot as fielders scrambled for a catch.
Majid Satti, 39, from Pakistan, captains the Eleven Brothers — with five players from Pakistan and six from India — who were runners-up in the men’s tournament.
Their two countries have long had a strained relationship, but “we have no issue... We are all like brothers here,” said Satti, a concierge who has been in Lebanon for 15 years.
Vice captain Raju Singh, 41, from India, said the players “never think about” politics.
Singh said he loves cricket and traveled almost 30km each week for the Sunday games.
“When we finish [and] we go home, we are waiting for next Sunday,” he said.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
RSS