Stuart Barnes visits Finland

Cricket continues to move forward with pace in Finland and during a weekend visit to Helsinki, I witnessed first hand the determination to keep the game developing and to reach as many of the indigenous population as possible.

A school session saw a group of twenty-four boys enjoy themselves enormously and want more sessions in the future. I was certainly impressed with how quickly the group grasped the basic concept of the game and there were at least four of the group that had a good amount of tactical sense also.

The National Youth Team were given a four hour session to help prepare them for the ECC Indoor Championship at Lords in February and this was followed by the Finnish Cricket Association Annual Awards Dinner, an opportunity for all the clubs to get together, before it gets too cold, and relive the seasons successes.

It is clear that the game of cricket will become more popular, and with that comes the challenge of delivering the product based on the demand. This will be the biggest challenge faced by the FCA in the coming years. I have a hunch though that this is something that has been talked about and will be covered by the people on the ?coal face'.

As always it was great to catch up with everyone and I'm looking forward to seeing the game get bigger and bigger in the very near future.