Step Aside Football: Women's Cricket Booms In Brazil

On a concrete playground in a poor hillside neighborhood in Brazil, ecstatic children are chasing a ball at top speed. But in an unusual scene for the football-mad country, they are indifferent to the goalposts nearby, instead swinging cricket bats and fielding drives. Welcome to Pocos de Caldas, a city of 170,000 people that is the capital of a lovably quirky quest to turn the land of Pele and Neymar into a passionate cricketing nation. Defying stereotypes, Brazil is emerging as a force to be reckoned with in cricket, especially the women's national team, who were given professional contracts in 2020 -- making the country the first in the world to take its women's team pro before the men's.

Most players have learned the game from 63 community youth programs run by the organization Cricket Brasil, whose president is ex-professional cricketer Matt Featherstone, an Englishman who married a Brazilian and moved here two decades ago.

"My wife thinks I'm mad" for trying to get Brazilians playing cricket, jokes Featherstone, 51, a strapping sportsman with infectious enthusiasm.

But his charisma and community spirit have turned Pocos de Caldas, a tiny spa hub nestled in the green mountains of southeastern coffee country, into what Mayor Sergio Azevedo boasts is "the only city in Brazil where more kids play cricket than football."

Cricket, samba style

When Featherstone moved to Brazil in 2000, he tried spreading his love of cricket at private schools, but soon realized he was competing against rugby, hockey, sailing and "everything else you can imagine," he says.

But in poor neighborhoods, where the options were "football or football," he discovered families were elated to have a new sports program.

Unlike in England, where