New Caledonia Bolstered by Fiji Camp
The small nation of New Caledonia is abuzz with the South Pacific Games less than a month away and none more so than the national cricket team.
Despite not being an ICC member, New Caledonia have a team entered into the Pacific Games Cricket Competition and will take on the likes of PNG, Vanuatu and Fiji late next month.
New Caledonia finalised their Games preparations with a week-long training camp in Fiji last week, culminating in two Twenty20 matches against a Fiji President's XI side in Lautoka on Saturday.
Team manager Steeven Selefen hailed the week a major success and has paid tribute to Cricket Fiji for its assistance during the week, particularly Fiji coach Steve Jenkin who spent the week in Nadi assisting with the camp.
"We enjoyed our stay in village Navatu Levu, because we shared with the people there and they took care of us very well," Selefen said.
"We want to thank Steve for all the help. It was very good coaching and the boys learnt a lot. We also learned some new drills which we will take home and use in our training."
"In New Caledonia we only have one ground and we have learnt this week that what is important is not the quality of the ground, which is great encouragement for us because we can see we can do more."
Cricket Fiji chief executive Jon Symonds said it had been a delight to host the team during the week.
"It's been fantastic to have New Caledonia here for a couple or reasons," Symonds said.
"Firstly, they're quite new to cricket so it was interesting to see how they perform, second, it's wonderful to have teams wanting to come and train and play here and experience Fiji and thirdly, we always like to support the development of cricket in the region so anything we can do to assist New Caledonia to improve is fantastic."
Only four countries will take part in cricket at the Pacific Games - New Caledonia, Fiji, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.
Samoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands were all originally meant to have competed, but pulled out recently due to financial reasons.
"Everyone is very excited about hosting the Pacific Games back at home and we are very happy to be involved," Selefen said.
Cricket will run from August 29 -September 2 at the Games in Noumea.
