A beacon of hope: The Beirut refugee camp offering children a lifeline through cricket

Palestinian children in Shatila refugee camp face discrimination and displacement and are largely illiterate. But as Richard Edwards discovers, a pioneering new cricketing project for boys and girls is providing respite from their grim predicament – and putting smiles on faces

Cricket holds a special place at the Shatila refugee camp (Richard Verity )

Good news has been thin on the ground in the Middle East in recent months, the majority of headlines focusing on conflict, escalation and an increasingly uncertain future in a region that is no stranger to crisis.

Deep in the Shatila refugee camp, first set up in southern Beirut for Palestinian refugees in 1949, though, lies one of global sport’s best-kept secrets – an unlikely beacon of hope through a project offering displaced children from across the region the opportunity to play a game that has never previously gained a foothold in the Arab world: cricket.

Just 24 hours after England’s sensational win in Hyderabad, on a cold January evening in the UK, The Independent is given the chance to speak to two of the Alsama project’s most promising young graduates, as well as the coaches who have witnessed at first hand the transformative impact that the sport is having.

Maram and Louay are both 17 and arrived in the camp as their home country of Syria descended into chaos. Both escaped the brutality of Isis. Unsurprisingly, neither had experience of playing cricket before. Now they’re part of a generation of talent – not unlike the Afghanistan refugees in the camp of Peshawar – eyeing progress. On and off the pitch.

“It’s very special – we have 50 per cent girls and 50 per cent boys. In the other sports there are no girls,” says Maram. “But here, Alsama is an even playing field. That’s what motivates me [to] continue.”

Shatila refugee camp, first set up in southern Beirut for Palestinian refugees in 1949, has 12 cricket hubs with more than 500 children taking part (Richard Verity)

The Alsama Cricket Report, published in December 2023, reported that 50 per cent of the full-time coaches operating in the camp are now female. The same percentage also hold student coaching roles.

Louay, who alongside Maram is now coaching the young cricketers coming through at the project, as well as playing, agrees that the sport has had a positive impact on every person involved.

“In the beginning, we had no idea about cricket,” says Louay. “In Lebanon, the main focus is always on football, tennis and basketball, but when I saw children running to the playground to play this sport I knew nothing about I was intrigued. I saw the impact it had, and now I’ve watched it grow into something incredible.”

The project was founded by Meike Ziervogel and Richard Verity, with Alsama now working hand in hand with the MCC Foundation alongside a range of other bodies in providing opportunities, not just for refugees within the camp, but also for young English coaches, not least Solomon Dark and Shay Kohler, who have just embarked on their second stint in Shatila after touching down in Lebanon last week. They are working alongside the project’s head coach, Palestinian-Syrian, Mohammed Khier.

There are currently 12 cricket hubs within Shatila, with as many as 546 teenagers playing the sport last year. The plan is to extend the number of hubs to 14 in 2024, with an eventual aim of having 42 within the camp by 2028. With six to eight hours of cricket a week – the more experienced teenagers play even more – the Alsama intake are receiving a well-rounded education in every sense.

In the majority of cases, though, these young cricket converts are having to make up for huge amounts of lost time – their formative years and early education decimated by the prosaic fight for personal survival.

“It takes a combination of elements for it to work its real magic, but that combination is very much in evidence in Shatila,” says Verity. “You have very constrained circumstances, you have poverty and hopelessness. You also have many different types of discrimination. Female discrimination, which comes in a very conservative society, and then more of a social discrimination that comes from being a Syrian refugee in Lebanon.

“Put all of that together and you get a very grim situation. But then through cricket, played seriously, you suddenly give a whole group of children a purpose, a skill and a way of relating with each other. Very quickly you have a group of children who absolutely adore the sport.

“We now have 540 children playing cricket and, give or take, 50 cricket teams. What the cricket also does, is complement the schools. We set up schools in the refugee camps for the cricketers [there are currently three, with a fourth on the way].

“These are children who are largely illiterate, children who have had no structure in their lives. Learning structures, learning disciplines, learning the power of repetition, means you’re much more able to thrive in a classroom. What we’re trying to do in the schools, is to do in six years what the rest of the world’s education systems do in 12.”

Adding coaching experience to their playing experience is also providing priceless life lessons for those involved.

“There are so many kids coming through the system,” says Kohler. “These young players [Maram and Louay] are leading the softball sessions and often there’s just two coaches for 30 kids.

“Many of these kids are playing cricket for the first or second time but they’re completely led by these guys. They’re fantastic.”

Cricket at Shatila, where 50 per cent of the full-time coaches operating in the camp are female, has developed since it was first introduced in 2018 (Richard Verity)

The project has already achieved so much since its inception in 2018, but there are bigger plans in place. Not least the possibility that the young Shatila cricketers of today could form the basis of a Syrian cricket team in the future. Perhaps one that could even qualify for the Olympics. After all, as Maram and Louay have already proved, if you’re going to dream, you may as well dream big.

“We’re not fooling around here,” says Verity. “We need to bring in the donations to make it happen, but when you have a critical mass of cricketers, some of whom are seriously talented – we would love to play international cricket.

“To enthuse the children and focus our efforts, we are trying to get ICC [International Cricket Council] membership and, in time, be able to field teams that could beat other international teams. Eventually, some of our children might be good enough to become professionals. And the Olympics? Why not.”

If the ICC is serious about spreading the global reach of the game, then the project in Shatila would be a welcome antidote to the mega-bucks franchise tournaments springing up across the globe.

But Shatila is about more than cricket. More than sport. It’s about empowerment.

“I am a role model for girls because I love to tell every girl to get up, do something, play cricket, be confident,” says Maram. ”If it wasn’t for cricket I would be at home doing chores, doing all the things that society wanted me to do.

“Now, because of cricket, and all the skills I have gained, I’m giving them to all the girls here. I’m telling them to stand up, be strong, be unstoppable, be unbreakable. They can do whatever they want. It’s something really big for us. We’re achieving our dreams. And we’re putting a smile on peoples’ faces.”

Regardless of where you live in the world, that’s a quality that remains priceless.

For more information and to donate, visit Alsama Cricket – Alsama Project