Long Form: Breakthrough for cricket in Barcelona with pitch set for women's team

The crack of leather on willow may not be a sound one associates with the Spanish region of Catalonia, but thanks to a popular vote, the city of Barcelona will have its own cricket training ground in 2022.

The public vote held June 20 asked the citizens of the regional capital to choose a project to be included in a €30m package destined to build new facilities and public spaces.

The €1.2m cricket field project finished first in the vote among 184 proposals.

But the result came as a little surprise, as during the previous stage of the popular vote the cricket field was also the most voted, this time among 2,000 other projects.

This is thanks to a campaign led by this group of young women, mostly first generation Spaniards, some of them Indian and Pakistani immigrants living in working-class suburbs of Barcelona.

The girls play cricket-11 since four years ago and want to become members of the first members of a future Catalan Cricket Federation.

With a large Pakistani and Indian communities, Barcelona is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the Mediterranean.

But the Catalan capital doesn't have facilities for this still exotic sport.

There are some 400 cricket players in Barcelona divided in over 25 teams, male and female.

Besides the pitch the project includes changing and storage rooms, lights and other amenities specific for cricket.

Behind "Criquet Jove Barcelona" (Catalan for Barcelona Young Cricket) is a local Fundació per a l'Esport I l'Educacio de Barcelona (FEEB, Foundation for Sports and Education) and the Catalan Cricket Federation.

There are four female cricket teams in Barcelona. Their 30 players started playing indoor cricket, but as they grew they started playing 11-a-side cricket. But because of lack of facilities they train and play in fields designed for other sports, such as baseball.