The “civilising quality of cricket” is something this writer believes in strongly; so much so that I’m desperately trying to drag my pleb. Welshman to a test-match! One LA Cricket team has recently made the headlines due to its heart warming tale of rescuing several players’ lives and putting them back on track. Compton, one of the most notorious suburbs in Los Angeles had a cricket club founded in its midst over 15 years ago by Ted Hayes, a charity worker and Katy Haber, a British film producer. The team has grown and prospered and is about to embark on a tour of Australia as the first US-born team to do so. One team member, Ricardo Salgado, is unable to make the tour due to a parole order and several others have disappeared back into the gangland culture. However Salgado told EuroSport “If it hadn’t been for cricket I would have been in a lot more trouble. If you are busy playing cricket, you don’t have time to run with gangs.” The Compton Cricket Club has been so successful it can now field two teams, has toured the UK, met Prince Edward and been involved in advertising. Coach Hayes believes that this success is due to the “etiquette” of cricket, which introduces a superior level of respect in cricket...the king of sports.
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