CRICKET: EATING AND DRINKING CRICKET IN COLOMBO
Want to be bowled over by a soup named after Muttiah Muralitharan and Imran Khan? Ready to face a Saurav Ganguly food platter? No, no one is inviting you to a buffet in a cricket field but, well, it comes close to that. We are speaking of a one-of-a-kind restaurant in the heart of Colombo that was begun 21 years ago as a one-of-a-kind gamble in entrepreneurship.
Cricket Club Cafй (CCC as it is popularly known) has definitely led the way to re-invent the sport that the island nation of Sri Lanka venerates — cricket. Set up in 1996 by a young Australian couple — James and Gabrielle Whight — when Sri Lanka was at the height of its civil war and had scarcity of foreign investors, the cafй criss-crosses between a restaurant and a cricket museum. While certainly bearing all the characteristics of a cricket museum, it is also a hub for bringing people together, irrespective of nationality and even beyond the boundary of sports. It is a place focused on empowerment and equality as well as fine cuisine based on invigorating ambience.
It has been sought after by almost every cricket team in the world and has an all-local staff of around 40 Sri Lankan youth representing the main ethnicities of Sri Lanka, namely Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. One of its staff members honed his culinary skills to the extent that he today works as a chef for the Michelle Obama Foundation in the United States, which focuses, among other themes, on health of children and youth. The all-male staff of Cricket Club Cafй are trained to multitask and the youth who come from rural areas of Sri Lanka, with almost no knowledge of English, leave having mastered the language.
A café in the heart of Colombo uses sport to heal the wounds of war
Gabrielle’s regret is that the cafй does not have female staff but she explains how cultural misconceptions of working for a ‘club’ prevented young women from being willing to join and work long hours in the night as required. “We had named our restaurant Cricket Club Cafй and this had a different connotation to the young Lankan women who applied initially for jobs at the cafй but insisted that they leave for home by 5pm because they did not want to be seen as working late at a ‘club’,” she says.
She traces the start and subsequent journey of CCC with nostalgia.
“We decided to start Cricket Club Cafй in 1994. We were in Melbourne and all our friends thought our decision was crazy. Sri Lanka was at that time embroiled in war and all that they had heard was about bomb blasts. We were motivated by our understanding of the cricket pulse of Sri Lanka and the fact that, apart from 5 star places in the city, there were no restaurants that the middle class could go to. We had done our background research and we were confident with what we knew of the island and its people that our initiative was worth a try,” says Gabrielle, known to her staff and clientele as Gabby.