Spanish cricket achieved another first on December the 8th when Catalonia staged what is believed to be their first ever night match in Spain`s second city when Barcelona Cricket Club and Trinitat Cricket Club teamed up to play at Montjuic.
Previously, a all day-night match had been played in Campoamar in 2004, in a competition that was won by Valencia CC, who at that time, were captained by the current Spanish International Faran Afzal.
The Barcelona based match started at 19.00 hours local time with 30 overs per side and was scheduled to finish under floodlights at midnight. The match attracted the curiosity of locals and many spectators stopped to watch the match after work, including several local government officials.
Barcelona won the toss and elected to bat and accumulated a respectable score of 179 off their allocated overs. Trinitat’s response was impressive and they were always up with the run rate, but good bowling by Aftab and Farooq turned the tide in Barcelona’s favour, with Barcelona finally running out winners by a meagre ten runs.
Many thanks to the Barcelona regional officer Khalid Shabaz for the details and photographs from the event.
