Brazil gets first cricket bat factory

Luiz Roberto Francisco shapes a cricket bat at a workshop in Pocos de Caldas last month. Pic/AFP

In a workshop with a stunning view of the mountains of southeastern Brazil, self-taught carpenter Luiz Roberto Francisco is chipping at a piece of pine and turning it into a rare artifact for this football-mad country: a cricket bat.

Francisco, 63, is the proud owner of Brazil's first cricket bat factory, based in the small city of Pocos de Caldas in Minas Gerais state, population 170,000. Not coincidentally, the leafy spa city is also the headquarters of Cricket Brasil, an organisation headed by Matt Featherstone, an English ex-cricketer who has set the ambitious goal of getting 30,000 Brazilians playing the sport he loves in the next three years.

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Since Featherstone, 51, retired from professional cricket and moved here with his Brazilian wife in 2000, he and Cricket Brasil's 19 staff have managed to grow the sport exponentially. There are now more than 5,000 cricketers in Brazil, thanks mainly to the organisation's 63 community youth programs, and the women's national team have won four of the past five South American championships. But that all ground to a halt when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, leaving those spreading the gospel of cricket without one key import: bats.

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