Caption: Cricket Fiji General Manager, Inoke Lesuma with the Permanent Secretary for Youth and Sports, Josefa Sania signing the agreement.Photo: SUPPLIED
MEDIA RELEASE
Cricket Fiji General Manager, Inoke Lesuma, met with the Permanent Secretary for Youth and Sports, Josefa Sania, this afternoon, to sign an agreement confirming the Ministry’s support for the funding of two new cricket pitches in the Lau islands.
Two new synthetic pitches will be constructed on the islands of Moce and Ono-I-Lau, in the lower Lau region that is traditionally the cricketing stronghold of Fiji, to the value of $30,000.
Both islands already have pitches that are much in need of maintenance, so the additional pitches will provide the opportunity for both development- and elite-level trainings and matches to occur simultaneously. With a large proportion of Fiji’s international cricketers originating from the Lau islands, this is an essential step towards once again raising Fiji’s profile on the international cricketing stage.
Mr Sania said the agreement highlighted the Ministry’s commitment in particular to minor sports in Fiji, and he hoped that within the coming years the sport’s popularity could return to the stage where ‘almost everybody in Fiji played cricket.’
Mr Lesuma reiterated Mr Sania’s sentiment, saying the government’s support of the most geographically widespread sport in Fiji was essential to the Cricket Fiji’s successful restructure of the national side.
“It will be a lot of hard work, but soon we will be back up were we once were,” he said, with reference to Fiji’s relegation from the World Cricket League (WCL) earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Fiji will look to regain its place in WCL Division 6 in late 2014.