The BGU Strikers is a cricket team comprised of international students including doctoral, post-doctoral, and exchange scholars who have chosen to further their studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. During the weekends, you can find the group playing cricket on a basketball court at a school close to the Murray H. Shusterman Gate of Knowledge - the University's main entrance. This is where they meet and decompress from their research work during the week. Since most of the players are from India and grew up playing or watching cricket, the team provides them a home-like environment, in addition to being a great exercise and stress reliever.
The BGU strikers have invited cricket teams from other universities such as the Ariel Warriors (from Ariel University), the Wisemen team (from Weizmann Institute of Science), and the Technion Titans (from Haifa's Technion University), to play friendly matches over the coming months. The matches will take place at Beer-Sheva's main cricket ground, with the support of the Beer-Sheva cricket club (BSCC).
Two friendly matches were recently played on June 4th, between the BGU Strikers and Technion Titans, and in both the games the Strikers won convincingly by defeating the Titans by 115 runs and 9 wickets.
With the help of BGU International and the successful organization of friendly bilateral cricket matches, the BGU Strikers are planning to conduct a friendly cricket tournament where cricket groups from all the universities can come together and participate and encourage playing cricket at Israeli universities. "The BGU Strikers, would like to thank other student groups for accepting our invitation and playing with us, sometimes students cover their own travel expenses since there is no public transportation available during the weekend", says Ankit Chauhan a team member. Students also contribute and purchase the equipment and most of it is imported from India.
"We would like to invite more students from the University to join us and take part in this wonderful club where we laugh, enjoy, practice, and most importantly relieve stress from the tough and hard work we do during the week. We are very lucky to be part of this group and it helped us by providing a networking platform, with not only BGU students but also with students belonging to other universities," concludes another team member.
