Cricket Addition Makes Madrid Truly Global Sports Capital
Madrid has taken a big leap to being Capital Mundial del Deporte 2022 as well as a centre of sporting global excellence by announcing that cricket, has been added to the list of activities taking place this year as part of the initiative to establish the city as a global sporting capital.
Cricket is one of the most played sports in the world with the International Cricket Council (ICC) claiming representatives from 125 countries from the game, including Spain.
The Madrid Cricket League will be played in T20 format at the La Elipa Sports Complex, in the Moratalaz district of Madrid.
In addition the ground will be the venue as Madrid and Barcelona Cricket Clubs clash in September for a classico match to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the teams first match.
In October La Elipa will also host an international T20 invitation charity tournament to raise money for Ukrainian children.
District councillor, Almudena Maíllo, highlighted that “the singular and unique sports facilities offered by Moratalaz, as is the case of the CDM La Elipa baseball ground, are unrivaled spaces to host this type of competition and make the district a benchmark for emerging sports in Madrid.”
The delegate for sports for the Municipality of Madrid, Sofía Miranda, stated that “to host this tournament at La Elipa brings together two of the objectives we set for ourselves when we arrived, promoting emerging sports and promoting major sporting events to turn Madrid into the great benchmark of national and international sport.”
Following a 3-million-euro renovation, La Elipa baseball ground has leapt into the 21 st century with a high-quality artificial grass surface on which Madrid Cricket Club will place its Notts Sport Powerplay roll-up wicket, allowing the facility to be shared with the existing baseball teams without modification.
Madrid Cricket Club is the oldest and one of the most well-known cricket clubs in Spain. The club dates back to 1962 before being re-founded in 2001 by Jon Woodward, Tom Fryer and Alex King.
Club President Jon Woodward said: “After more than 20 years of playing all our matches away from home with an average 950 km round trip per weekend, we are very grateful to the Municipality of Madrid and the District of Moratalaz for giving us this opportunity. We plan to grow our club to compete at the highest level”.
Head of the club’s youth team, Lewis Clark said: “Next autumn we hope to start Madrid’s first municipal cricket school at La Elipa which will open up the sport to Spanish kids that have shown great enthusiasm during our intro-to-cricket events at schools around Madrid.”
Cricket in Spain has been growing over the last decade and now consists of over 100 teams that fall under the auspices of the national organization Cricket España.
Last year Badalona became European T10 Cricket Championship winners, defeating more than 20 national champions from around Europe in the finals held in Malaga.
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