On Saturday, June 7 and Sunday, June 8, 2008 we celebrated cricket on Maui with our friends from the Honolulu Cricket Club (HCC). These first matches on Maui's new pitch generated plenty of interest. Big Mahalo to our hometown media, The Maui News, Maui Weekly, Maui TV News and Maui Time Weekly. Some of the excellent pictures below are thanks to TV Mott who writes the Sports Column in the Maui weekly called TV Timeout and provides a trivia question each week sponsored by various sports bars around the island. We are most grateful to Reverend Kedar from the Temple of Peace in Haiku for blessing our new pitch. Mark Berwick, President and Captain of the visiting HCC team said Baldwin Beach Park may be a contender for the most beautiful cricket ground in the world. Coming from someone who has played all over, this is something for Maui to be proud of and cherish in the future.

Besides cricket, we have plenty of food, drink and, of course, music. Joel Luong and his lovely new bride Tanya made the hospitality (lunch, drinks) look easy. Wakhimba Mills and his Rasta friend Lucky provided fresh catch-of-the-day straight out of the Hawaiian refrigerator - the Pacific Ocean. Andrew Wallace and his prettier other half Joanne generously shared the healthy bounty of Kookie Therapy and drinks, among other things. Baz Cumberhatch brought everyone an almost-white-cricket T-shirt for the game from his company Irie Aloha.

We are losing one of our brothers-in-arms, one of the team's most complete and enthusiastic players (and Tasmanian Devil ladies man), Matt Lachal, for the summer and hopefully not much longer. But Maui Cricket Club just doubled in size over the weekend, thanks to all the hoopla. It was a blast!

HCC dominated the proceedings on both days, as befits an island with 10 times more population than Maui. Hats off to HCC: they got game! However, Maui put up a stiff fight earning individual player recognitions, Daniel Lovell for best player of the tournament and Andrew Wallace for best batting performance, by remaining defiantly unbeaten in both games, top scoring with 58 runs on Day 2.

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