My oldest son played his first cricket match on Wednesday. This was pretty marvellous to watch and made my ‘dad the taxi driver’ role, quite worthwhile. The competitive spirit of a bunch of six year olds waving the old willow around was a sight to behold! Cricket at this level is rather similar to Action Cricket. Each boy gets to bowl and face six balls. Losing your wicket when batting costs your team a couple of runs but you get to keep on batting. If you can picture a group of small short boys surrounding a pair of wickets throwing balls at each other, you almost have it. Where dropped catches, mis-fields and fresh air swooshes are the norm, catches, direct hits and cover drives are thoroughly enjoyed!

The cricket was a wonderful catalyst to some interesting discussions. The boys played against a team from a neighbouring community. In this community, one bedroom houses fight for space amongst garden shacks and blocks of flats. Each building had coughed up bright coloured clothing that clung to every available railing. Rubbish collected in corners and stuck to fences like new age climbing roses. This was not like home at all! There were no large manicured lawns with bright cheerful gardens. There were no maids to pester and nag and order about. There were no swimming pools or electronic toys or bicycles with streamers. It could be that the people who manicured those lawns and cleaned those pools and scrubbed those houses were too tired to do their own when they got back home here!

This was our boys first experience that all life is not as easy and simple and as wonderful as their sheltered ones had led them to believe. It was also something not easily assumed into the six year old lifestyle where life revolves around self at the exclusion of others. My child commented on the state of the fields and amount of litter, wondering why nobody had bothered to clean it all up. Another child commented on the unfairness of having to play against a team that did not even wear a uniform!

The simple fact was that this match was a meeting of two very different sets of children, one privileged and one underprivileged. The spirit of both teams was highly competitive, the handstands were awesome, the enthusiasm great and the result extremely tight. It brought home again the amazing leveller that is the sports field! What a wonderful place for these privileged boys to realise that people are people no matter how different they may look or seem. That every single one of us in unique and have wonderful things hidden within us that can be offered to the world. That with a little tolerance and understanding there is a world full of beautiful and moving experiences to be shared and enjoyed. That money is not the great measure of worth and that this yardstick is horribly flawed.

I too came to realise the great irony of my own life. My wife and I have gone to great lengths to send our son to this elite and brilliant school, where he can get a phenomenal education in how to succeed in this world of ours. This world which is so focussed on money and power and prestige. On the other hand this is the same capitalistic world that I have just left because of its self centred lack of values and single minded pursuit for material gain. It is the same world in which I am trying to encourage others to follow a different path, a path that looks to the common good. And so as my son rubs shoulders on a daily basis with children whose parents are mainly focussed on the material value in life, I am going to have to fight to counterbalance his life with my own alternative views. Hopefully, both of my sons will receive the skills to succeed in this world as well as a deep understanding of the real value of life. I hope that they will choose to use those skills to make a meaningful difference!

I had to laugh at a mother who was so flustered at being in this area that she was ready to leave for home as soon as she arrived. It would seem that old racist habits still surface in some with a terrible fear of the poor. I refrained from suggesting that she could alleviate a lot of fear in the future if she left her designer bag, sunglasses and shoes, the Range Rover and about a kilogram of real jewellery at home!