The Samoa International Cricket Association has named its 15-player squad to play a bi-lateral series against Fiji starting tomorrow, 2-5 February 2010. The winner gains the right to go against Japan and Papua New Guinea at the Regional pre-Women’s Cricket World Cup qualifier in Japan in May 2010. The occasion marks the international debut for ‘Nafanua’, Samoa women’s national cricket team. Nafanua’s composition has a decidedly international flavour for the historic moment with eight local girls, six members from New Zealand and the sole Australian contingent a familiar face to...
Read more...

With a passion for cricket burning through Samoa, the native variation of the game – which once involved teams of 300 and whip-wielding ‘coaches’ – has had to readapt.  It does exactly what it says on the tin. Granted brief respite from the seemingly ceaseless cycle of English cricket the Spin, like the Walrus, has decided that the time has come to talk of other things. A way away from India and further still from Lord’s a row is taking place that will be recognizable to anyone who regularly reads about cricket. On one side of the divide are the modernisers and...
Read more...

IT IS only 25 miles from Apia, the capital of Western Samoa, but it might as well be 125, given its isolation: the sea on one side, and cut off from the rest of the island by a range of extinct volcanoes on the other. Until last September, Fagaloa, a district of five small villages, was no more remembered than any other dot on the vast South Pacific – but in three weeks, the six Samoan chiefs who run its district council will go on trial for incitement to murder. The case, which has already seen one man sentenced to death for murder, another given life for arson, 20 villagers jailed...
Read more...