This year's Bulgarian Cricket Federation (BCF) season ended with a children's Christmas cricket tournament in Elin Pelin. The tournament was attended by teams from the Municipality and Sofia Region, who began work on the long-term project of BCF to popularize and introduce this sport to schools and was also carried out with the support of the Elin Pelin Municipality. The competition was very emotional, with joy and smiles from children, parents and teachers. The new skills of the children from the schools of Elin Pelin and Cricket club Yulis are already visible, but the "debutants" from the Primary School "Hristo Botev" - Lesnovo with teacher Silvia Ivanova also left a very pleasant impression. They started practicing cricket this fall after receiving a donation of equipment and supplies from Lords Taverns /charity organization from Great Britain/, one of the largest donors to cricket in the world.
"We are sending off a very difficult, but at the same time I dare say successful year. Despite the problems related to the pandemic situation, we managed to hold almost all planned competitions and tournaments from the State Sports Calendar, both indoors and outdoors. Cricket fans and friends will remember this year with Bulgaria's first participation in the T20 World Qualifiers in Finland and our first victory in these qualifications. We can boldly say that this success was planned, because it is one of the priority directions for the development of Bulgarian cricket. The internal calendar was subordinated to the interests of the national sport, we organized the team's participation in a strong international tournament in Malta, we held a series of home matches and a visit by the Serbian team, which has also made great progress in recent years. Naturally, the influence on the team's game of the new consultant of our national teams, Andy McCulloch, was also felt. But this is already history and we must look and move forward. I think that in this direction too, the year is significant. We have started two new development projects, the main one “10x10x10” is long-term with the goal to launch our sport in schools. We are planning and have started work in new schools in 10 municipalities. Our goal is for every school to have at least 10 cricket sessions during each term and for the project participants to have a national review at the end of the school year. For this purpose, we have organized a training course with the physical education teachers in these schools to introduce them to this new subject, and thanks to our donation from Lord’s Taverns, we distributed equipment and supplies for practicing our sport to all schools that expressed interest in participating in the project. At the beginning of the second term, we are planning another training course with the teachers, because there are many new things related to the education of children that I want them to be taught, because they are and will be the main driving force in the project.
We will talk about the long-term goals of the project later, because they are too ambitious and it is too early for that, because we expect this project to last 10 years.
We cannot miss the fact that in 2022, for the first time, the National University Championship / NUC / for cricket was launched under the auspices of the University Sports Association "Academic". Men's and women's teams from five universities took part, and this is a big step forward in the development of this typical university sport for the world and in our country. I cannot but express my gratitude to the leadership of the University Sports Association "Academic" who showed and demonstrated in practice the commitment of the Association to the specific needs and requirements of the students, as well as to the implementation of activities that are fully consistent with the program for the development of university sports in Bulgaria. I hope for fruitful work in the new year 2023, because in countries with developed university sports, cricket occupies a leading position and we must shorten the distance with these countries, because we were and must again be a leading sports nation,” said Prof. Nikolay Kolev – founder and long-time chairman of BCF.
“Our ambition is to continue the upward trend of our sport in the new year. We plan to build a new outdoor training center, which will be for all non-traditional sports in our country. This will also give the opportunity to all children's teams participating in our “10x10x10” project to train under appropriate conditions. All teams from Sofia will train in batting and bowling there, as well as in specialized training sessions for our national teams.
Our champion IBCC is scheduled to participate in the group stage of the European Champions League from March 2 to 6 in Malaga, Spain, in 2023. We hope to have a good preparation during the winter to have an even more successful participation compared to this year.
Our European Cricket Series next year is one of the events with the greatest weight for us. With this edition, the participating teams will now be eight and the matches will last 10 days, with all matches being broadcast live on the European Cricket Network website and platform worldwide. The start of this tournament is on May 22nd and we are already working on organizing this important event for our cricket. After the end of the tournament, a three-day T10 tournament is planned with the participation of the national teams of Serbia and Greece, which will be the first of its kind in the region. We are planning bilateral matches with an exchange of visits in T20, participation in the European T10 finals for national teams at the end of September, in order to give an opportunity to all players at different levels to perform, because in 2024 we have a new world T20 qualification. Selecting new players will be a priority for us, because no matter how far away it may seem to you, the Olympic qualifications for 2028 should not surprise us.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish all our players, coaches, figures and friends of cricket a Merry Christmas and New Year.
