Beirut: Migrant workers cheer in a Beirut parking lot as their team faces a crisis race in Lebanon, where working conditions are often dire.
Sri Lankan cricketer Pradeepa Silva, 42, said as she prepared coconut rice and other traditional food to share with her teammates: “We are very happy on Sundays … We eat together, we laugh together.”
“Work is exhausting,” and workers are anxious and worried, said Silva, who works six days a week as a domestic worker and pays for her daughter’s university tuition.
Every Sunday, players mainly from Sri Lanka, but also from the Philippines, India and Pakistan gather in the Ashrafieh neighborhood of Beirut for a sport that is little known in Lebanon.
Migrant workers work under Lebanon’s controversial “kafala” sponsorship system, which rights groups have repeatedly condemned as enabling abuses.
On May 19, several hundred people gathered for traditional food stalls, DJs playing Bollywood hits and other music, bands from the British and Sri Lankan embassies, and young Syrian refugee players.
Iris Sagario of the Philippines ran onto the field for the Roaring Lions women’s team, wearing an orange and blue jersey with her name on the back.
“I love cricket,” said the 43-year-old, who works as a domestic worker. “I’m very happy to play every Sunday” – a single weekend.
After the match was won, the Sagarion team hugged and cheered. They went on to win the Women’s Cup.
According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 160,000 migrants from 84 nationalities were in Lebanon last year.
As Hezbollah and the Israeli army clash in the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, southern Lebanon is bombed daily, and several foreign embassies are asking their citizens to leave the country.
“I started to worry,” but “the man (the employer) assured me that everything was fine,” said Sagario, who was in Lebanon in 2006 when Israel and Hezbollah went to war.
Curious passers-by sometimes peek over the fallen stone wall to watch the game.
Organizer Fernando Sugath, 52, from Sri Lanka, said some players have nicknamed the parking lot, which has been used for almost twenty years, “Lebanon’s Lord’s”, a reference to London’s famous Lord’s cricket ground, known as “cricket house”. . “.
The parking game was halted for five years when players could not access the site and restarted in 2022, Sugat said.
The team changed its name to St. Joseph’s Cricket Club in honor of the neighboring church that helped them return to the site.
Migrant cricket workers are “very lucky to have a good employer who takes Sundays off,” said Sugat, who came to Lebanon in 1996 as a cleaner and now works as an administrative assistant.
Rights groups have long criticized Lebanon’s strict sponsorship system, saying it facilitates the exploitation and abandonment of migrant workers by their employers amid reports of physical and sexual abuse, unpaid wages and long working hours.
Sugath asked all employers to give workers “at least an hour, two hours off on Sundays … They should be free, use the phone, call their families.”
When the men’s round started, the big players started smashing the ball into the rows of trees in the parking lot while they scrambled to catch the fielders.
Pakistan’s 39-year-old Majid Satti, who won the men’s event, led the Eleven Brothers – five players from Pakistan and six from India.
The two countries have strained relations for a long time, but “we don’t have any problems… we are all brothers here,” said Satti, a concertgoer who has lived in Lebanon for 15 years.
Indian vice-captain Raju Singh, 41, said the players “don’t think much” about politics.
Singh, an electrician by trade, donned his team’s traditional cricket white, long white shirt and shoes, and one of the people who tossed a coin to determine which team will start to field or bat.
Lebanon’s 500 lira coin, worth 35 US cents until 2019, is now worth less than one cent after Lebanon’s economic crisis saw some migrant workers fired by their employers and others forced to leave the country.
Singh said he loves cricket and travels nearly 30 kilometers every week for Sunday matches.
“We look forward to next Sunday when we finish (and) go home,” he said.
Sunday cricket an escape for migrant workers in Lebanon
