Cricket is finding a new foothold in Mexico - in its prisons

Ask a cricket newbie what they find most intriguing about the game and their answer is likely to be something about how two teams can play for five days with no winner, or the lbw law. But for a group of people at Mexico's National Commission of Physical Culture and Sport (CONADE), it was an entirely different thing.

"One thing they liked in particular was how the umpire's decision is always respected and never questioned," Craig White, secretary of the Mexico Cricket Association (MCA) says. "They liked that discipline element."

Consider that this is a country where football referees once went on strike in protest over player behaviour, and the admiration for the umpire having the final word may start to make sense. It could also explain why they decided to include cricket as part of an extracurricular prison programme, which has won the ICC's Development Initiative of the Year Award in 2024.

Why prisons? With more than 230,000 people currently in jail, and some of the highest levels of crime in the world, they are a grim reality in Mexico. And the incarcerated, while denied the rights of the free, also need to return to society, and partly, their period in prison is about preparing them for that.

Why cricket? The idea took shape in October 2021, when the MCA stepped in to host the ICC America Women's T20 regional qualifier in place of the USA at a time when Covid-19 travel restrictions were still in place. Members of Mexico's sports ministry were invited to watch the event at the Reforma Athletic Club in the municipality of Naucalpan, north west of Mexico City, and given a special cricket demonstration. Four months later, the MCA was invited to present a two-day workshop to the sports ministry . "We sort of taught them the basics of batting, bowling, fielding," White says. "There was one guy in particular, Eduardo Acevedo [chief of department, CONADE], who took cricket and ran with it. He proposed it as part of the physical activity in prisons."

Initially the MCA, which is an entirely volunteer-run organisation, just provided equipment, in the form of plastic cricket sets and advice - but within a few months they were going into prisons to run sessions. Currently they have eight trainers involved in the project.

One of the volunteers is Mexico women's international Anna Septien, who is also the MCA's treasurer and development officer. Septien had never been in a prison before. "I've learnt that prisons in Mexico have a lot of opportunities for integral development like yoga, knitting and sports," she says. "The sports ministry certifies the prisoners and teaches them how to be physical trainers. When they get out, they will have this title and they will have the opportunity to work. When you've been in prison, you have all this stigma and it's difficult for you to find opportunities, but this could provide an alternative opportunity for a job."

The volunteers work in four low-to-medium risk prisons in Mexico City, the country's capital, and CONADE also has cricket programmes in two maximum-security federal prisons in the northern states of Durango and Coahuila. Both male and female prisoners play cricket, sometimes together. They have had to adapt the game to the time and space they have available, and have even created their own scoring system.

"It depends on the prison, in terms of the kind of places that they play," Septien says. "Some are on concrete, some on grass, which can be more soil than grass in many cases, and some on basketball courts."

The prisoners only get an hour of free time each per day and so they can't always have 11 players on the team - it depends on how many are allowed to come out at the time decided. So they have made tweaks to adjust: everybody gets three chances to bat; if the ball hits the wall, it's a four. "It's not perfect cricket but they are trying. And for those of them whose rooms are underground, it is the only time they see daylight," Septien says.

For her, the experience of going into prisons has been both confronting and surprising. While she understands that some of the people she is dealing with are dangerous, she has learnt that they are not that different. "You expect to feel [a certain way] before you go there, and some of them do have a harsh or scary look about them, but I have to say I've never been in another place full of robust and big men and felt more respected," she says. "And you know, we are all just one action away [from being in their shoes]."

The humanity of the project has been highlighted in the early results of the programme. "We have heard from the government that some of the kids of the prisoners have heard that their parents are playing cricket and they have expressed an interest in becoming involved," she says. "And we have been told that conflict in the prisons has been lowered and that is a good outcome. We are promoting cricket as a peaceful and inclusive sport."

The hope is that when these prisoners move back into communities, they will be able to spread the game by working in coaching or training roles. "Cricket is a new sport. They won't have competition because no one else teaches cricket. So they could do that in their region. That's the idea."

But cricket is, in fact, not that new to Mexico. The country was one of the first outside England to play the sport. It arrived in the 1820s, with those who travelled there from England to work in the silver mines, and was also reportedly played by the Emperor Maximilian; there is a photograph of him playing a Sunday game. When Mexico became a republic for the second time in the late 1860s, work and investment opportunities drew expats from Britain and Australasia, who provided patronage for the game.

Cricket continued to be played in elite circles up until around the Mexican Revolution and the First World War shortly after, when many expats went home, which led to a drying up of interest in the sport.

The game did not ever trickle down to the common man, who had little time and almost no access to cricket, and that has not changed much. As things stand, in a country of 127.5 million, Septien estimates that there are "less than a thousand cricket players", and that the sport is played mainly in three cities. But there is room for expansion and some readily available facilities to support it.

The Reforma Athletic Club has been a cricket venue since 1894, and one of the highest in the world. At 2300 metres above sea level, it sits more than 500 metres higher than Johannesburg and is a third as high as Mount Everest. It hosted the 2021 women's T20 regional qualifier, although Mexico was not a participant. That could change in coming years, with Mexico putting an emphasis on growth in the women's game in particular.

Not only does the MCA have an ambitious plan to establish cricket in all 32 Mexican states by 2030, it also hopes to make cricket the No.1 girls' sport in the country in the same time frame. So maybe if you ask a cricket newbie whether they've heard of the Mexican women's team in a few years' time, you will be surprised at the answer.