Stourbridge Stallions take ultimate glory in winning the Worcestershire Ramadan Cricket Festival!
Worcestershire Cricket Foundation hosted the Worcestershire Ramadan Cricket Festival over the last three weeks, bringing the community together through the love of cricket to play indoor tape ball cricket at night during Ramadan.
This is the second successive year of hosting the Festival with the main aim of helping to promote unity, sportsmanship, and cultural exchange during the holy month of Ramadan. We promised this year would be bigger and better than the 2023 Festival and it was! We doubled the number of teams entering, live streamed the games on YouTube and hosted the festivals in Worcester and Dudley.
The matches were played indoors at the University of Worcester and Thorns Collegiate Academy, scheduled to allow players to break their fast and pray together. We would like to thank our food suppliers Munchies Worcester and U.K Top No.1 Southern Fried Chicken.
Over the two Festivals (Worcester & Dudley) we had fourteen teams competing across four nights, Redditchstan Royals (Worcester Festival) and Stourbridge Stallions (Dudley Festival) both advanced to finals night which was held at Edgbaston on Thursday 4 April 2024.
The finals night proved to be an intense and exciting evening with Redditchstan Royals and Stourbridge Stallions facing two new opposition, Sparkhill Street and Birmingham Hawks from the Warwickshire Cricket Foundation Ramadan Cricket Festival. With both Worcestershire festival teams making the final and Stourbridge Stallions emerging victorious in a tense final, defeating the thrilling Redditchstan Royals.
The festival provided a fun and unique way to celebrate Ramadan and helped build stronger bonds between the diverse communities in Worcestershire. Here at the Foundation we are committed to continuing to host similar events in the future to promote diversity and unity through sports.
Speaking about the festival, Worcestershire Cricket Foundation Wicketz Development Officer, Shozair Ali, said, “After hearing about the success of last year’s Ramadan league it was a process of how we could expand and make it bigger and better."
“The competition gave opportunities for communities to get together, open their fast together, pray together and do what they love which is to play cricket. To have these games Live streamed was a big boost and if anyone did miss any of the games do visit our YouTube channel and see what you missed out on.”
“It was a great team effort from everyone at Worcestershire Cricket Foundation and we want to thank every team involved for taking part. Next year’s plans are already starting to take place!”
Club Development Officer at Worcestershire Cricket Foundation, Callum James, added, “After last year’s success, we were extremely excited to grow the program to two host venues this year, giving more players in the county access to the festival."
“The festival was an incredible success with the quality of cricket on show being fantastic. Most importantly the competition gave opportunities for different communities to come together and appreciate the month of Ramadan and what that means to Muslims around the world. We are already striving to find ways to improve the festival next year and continue to develop this exciting competition!”