The ICC Cricket World Cup in India is reaching its climax. Unfortunately the Belgian national team didn’t qualify this time round, but if Hassan Shah, the president of Cricket Flanders, is to be believed the team stands a good chance of qualifying for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, when cricket returns to this event. Belgium finished second, behind England, in the European Champions League. If we win in Los Angeles cricket will truly be coming home as the sport was, of course, invented in West Flanders in Belgium.
It was during the Middle Ages that cricket was first invented in West Flanders. Hassan Shah likes to describe the sport played at this time as “primitive cricket” and it is indeed Pieter Breughel, one of the great Flemish primitive artists, who provides conclusive proof of the sport’s Flemish roots in the background of his painting “The Harvesters”.
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