Hi. First of all, the important bit. Cricket Without Boundaries is an amazing charity taking cricket to developing commuties throughout Africa and promoting AIDS awareness at the same time. They do some incredible work bringing communities together, and teaching children and adults. You can see some of their work in action at their youtube page: http://www.youtube.com/cwbcharity
So what is this all about? It's a bit crazy, right? Going to Tallinn to play cricket against Estonia and Finland. Yes, yes it is, particularly given the skillset of the OBOccasionals XI. So how did it come about, and what the hell is going on with that OB?
Many years ago, the Guardian newspaper started covering live sporting events with minute-by-minute text updates. For cricket, this became Over-By-Over, or OBO coverage. Over the years a community of followers and contributors have built up, turning the OBO into Test Match Special for the internet age.
In February of this year, one dedicated OBOer, Robin Hazlehurst, announced a bit of a challenge. Robin runs the Old Barbarians Cricket Club (http://www.oldbarbarians.ee) based in Tallinn and had arranged a match against fellow OBOer Sara Torvalds' Finnish team. Now he wanted to create an OBO touring party to come over from England and participate in a triangular tournament.
Now a cricketing XI has been pulled together through the pages of the OBO, the OBOccasionals XI, along with a couple of umpires and a one woman Barmy Army.
We'd like to use our little international cricketing expidition as a way to help raise money for some far more important and valuable international cricketing work by asking people to donate to Cricket Without Boundaries.