Indian students have a win in Footscray!

25-06-10, by Kate Allen
The Credo Indian Tigers had a fantastic premiership victory on Wednesday night in the Grand Final of the Action Indoor Cricket Competition in Footscray.



The team was established, in part, as a response to the increase in violence against overseas students and highly publicised murder of Indian student Nitin Garg in the Footscray locality. Such events have served to highlight the broader problems within the booming but under-regulated overseas tertiary education sector and the vulnerabilities it creates for students.

Throughout the season over 15 different Indian students participated in the team in the 6-a-side competition. The team was managed by David Boon, a Praxis Victoria Community Work student, and mixed overseas students with participants in Urban Seed's Credo Cricket program to encourage local connections.

At the invitation of Premier John Brumby, some team members got to meet with Shane Warne the day before he flew out to participate in this years Indian Premier League. The meeting, enabled through participants in Cricket Victoria's Harmony Forum including Primus Telecom, was held on the lawns at Parliament House and included a round table discussion about the issues faced by students.

Another highlight of the season was having 15 people attend "The Long Walk" and "Dreamtime at the G" AFL Football Match as part of the Essendon Football Club and Cricket Victoria's GLoBALL social inclusion initiative. It was a huge thrill for Indian students to be at the sacred home of cricket in our city but also to share something of the cultural experience that comes from 40,000 years of history and being surrounded by a bay full of First Australians barracking loudly forthe Bombers!

Indian student Ashish Narula was named for Man of the Match taking 2 for 7 and scoring 28 in the 10 run Grand Final victory. His post on his Facebook page after the game captured the reason why we started the team:
"Thank you very much sir. I have become a great fan... Australia is a great place to be, rather, I should say, Melbourne and Footscray are great places to be :) go Melbourneeeee."