Cricket’s healing power

The healing power of sport is well-documented – charity games following a natural disaster are as much about raising smiles as about raising money. And so it proved for a group of Indians living in Yokohama. Terrified by the earthquake and traumatised by the news of the tsunami’s devastation in Sendai, a dozen men and women came together at a Yokohama stadium on Saturday to play a Twenty20 game as thanksgiving.

“On Saturday morning, we were relieved to hear that the tsunami warning was off. We were yet to recover from Friday’s nightmare. So, we decided to organise a cricket match,” Sriram Balasubramanyam, a techie from Bangalore, told Bangalore Mirror. “As the batsmen started hitting fours and sixes, we began to forget what happened just a few hours ago.” A sliver of good news in tragic times.