It’s Thursday lunchtime in Warsaw, and I’m standing in a field outside the city, in the rain. I’m trying, and failing, to hit a Polish off-spinner. Chasing 206, we’re 23-4. 

I’ve never been so happy on a cricket pitch.

For this story to make sense, I need to mention that last year I released a book about – of all things – the Ukrainian cricket team. 

Drawing on two of the biggest parts of my life – I have always loved cricket, and I used to live in Kyiv – the book is about the eccentric history of the game in Ukraine, and the truly heroic things its players did to save lives at the start of the war.

The story received attention all over the world, and was shortlisted at the 2025 Charles Tyrwitt Sports Book of the Year Awards. 

This led to an invitation for a Ukraine team to take part in the annual Euro Cup tournament in Poland. The Euro Cup is a T20 competition that the Polish Cricket Federation organises every summer on their home ground – a pretty, arable field in a well-to-do little town called Stare Babice, just west of Warsaw. This year the matches would also feature the national cricket teams of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Iceland.

This event, I hoped, could be a chance to raise some money for two charities that I’m involved with: Fierce Calm, which offers yoga and other therapies for wounded Ukrainian soldiers; and Ukraine Charity, which runs humanitarian projects across the country for vulnerable people and children. Supporters could donate to the charities for every run the team scored. At the end of the competition, the players could sign a jersey for them to auction.

Sadly, the national team I needed to put together couldn’t be a real one. Russia’s war in Ukraine is still taking lives and ruining towns; the country still lives under Martial Law, and men of fighting age are not permitted to leave. Several of the cricketers, including a wicketkeeper for one of the teams, are still serving on the front lines. 

The foreign-born players – Indians who moved to Ukraine to study or work years or decades ago, and made the country their home – have now left. The invasion has brought chaos to their lives too.

The Euro Cup is not an official international event, so for a country in Ukraine’s situation, the tournament’s organiser, a man called Tarun who runs Polish cricket, agreed not to ask questions about our passports. As the team couldn’t be stocked with Ukrainian nationals, I had the idea to put together a squad of special guests and celebrities, to really raise the profile of the two great charities. 

These guest players would just be ‘placeholders’, keeping people talking about the real Ukrainian cricketers, and playing in their honour, with the hope that the yellow and blue jerseys can be taken back by the original players again in years to come.

With a few weeks to go, a lovely bit of luck introduces me to someone who agrees to sponsor our team. Suddenly we have a budget for professional kits, the tournament entrance fee, and tickets for the one remaining available Ukrainian cricketer to fly in from Germany.

Our sponsor is also very well connected in the world of cricket and media. Over lunch in London we brainstorm ideas for the big names who could join us in Poland: 

A fast bowler currently playing for England Legends helped Ukrainian refugees in Poland at the start of the war. Some household-name broadcasters and journalists would make the perfect slips cordon. A British soldier who served Ukraine heroically in the siege of Mariupol had mentioned in interviews that he used to be a wicketkeeper… 

Hundreds of messages later, not one of them could make it.

A week before the tournament began, Iceland posted social media graphics of their 16-man touring squad. Ukraine had four players:

It was Hardeep Singh, originally from Punjab, who introduced cricket to Ukraine in 1993. He was the head of the Ukraine Cricket Federation during his 30 years living in the city of Kharkiv. Hardeep would be flying in from Dubai, where he now lives, to captain the team.

Wahab, born in Kerala in India, had played cricket in Ukraine since 2007, and was on the fringes of the national team when the Russian invasion began in 2022. He is now based in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Misha Zahurskiy is the son of Yuri Zahurskiy – the best cricketer that Ukraine ever produced. But it was Misha who made the highest ever score by a Ukrainian batter. He would be flying in from Frankfurt.

In normal circumstances I wouldn’t qualify to play for Ukraine. But I lived in Kyiv for three years in my twenties, and have been involved in all sorts of Ukrainian trips and projects ever since. 

Still, this tournament was going to be way above my level. Some of the best Asian-born cricketers in northern Europe would be there. My best innings lately is the 8 I scored last year in a forest outside Paris. My highlight this season was opening the bowling in Ed Smith’s garden.

(1 for 41, since you ask).

But it wasn’t the quality of the squad I was panicking about. I had promised the sponsor that I would find four or five native Ukrainians – I just hadn’t reckoned on that being so difficult. I still only had Misha. 

Desperate not to lose face, in the week before I flew to Warsaw I begged my friends – and plenty of people I don’t know – to find me some Ukrainians who were free to come to Warsaw. With each day of silence my messages became more and more pushy and strange. I’m scared to check who has now blocked me.

With a few days to spare, I found three Ukrainians willing to try a bizarre foreign sport for some good causes. Borys, and two of his friends, brothers Dmytro and Ilya, were already living in Warsaw, and could make it on the Saturday. They looked like real sportsmen too.

That made seven. To make up the numbers, I made a few desperate social media call-outs, asking for some friends of Ukraine to join us. This resulted in five Brits – Tim, John, Jonathan, Stu and Ian – booking transport and hotels for Stare Babice at next to no notice.

Not all our 12 players could play in all of the matches. For every game we ended up borrowing some guys living in Poland, who hadn’t been picked for the Poland squad. Asir, Durai, Paramjit, Kanna and Muneeb were quickly added to the group chat.

Hardeep also found Ajit, who now lives in Katowice in Poland, but until the start of the war was in Kyiv with his Ukrainian wife, daughter and son. 

Somehow, as we took to the field for our first game – the rainy Thursday match against the hosts – we had a full team. 

The following Sunday, at the end of our Euro Cup journey, I put a long, emotional video message in our chat. They may not be famous, but those people who ended up answering our call were the best people I have ever played cricket with. Actually, they are the best people I have ever spent time with. 

Team squads from the Euro Cup tournament

We knew Poland and Iceland would be strong; both have serious cricket leagues, and Warsaw and Reykjavik have plenty of expats to choose from. We targeted Latvia and Lithuania as the matches we thought we could win. 

Our hopes nosedived before we had even left our hotels. We all tuned in to an app to watch the first match, where Lithuania’s young Pakistani pace bowler was bowling fast. 

I had badly misjudged how seriously everyone takes the Euro Cup. It’s no place for a touring charity team. It is cutthroat cricket. Every match is also broadcast live on Youtube, and live scores and stats are shown on the app.

Morale didn’t improve when we got to the field. While we were still trying to learn each other’s names, sheltering from the drizzle in our white gazebo on the boundary, the Latvia squad arrived in matching tracksuits, and immediately began some intense catching practice.

It was clear that Hardeep – who had captained a real Ukraine team to victory on this turf in 2018 – was playing to win. And, truth be told, although most of the lads we borrowed didn’t have a connection to Ukraine, they were better cricketers than the Brits and Ukrainians I had found.

At the same time, the Brits had gone to crazy lengths to come to Poland at such short notice. I could tell it meant a lot to them to be part of this unique, intrepid team. I was terrified they would go home without getting a game.

I came up with a strategy. Every evening, I told Hardeep that whichever new Brits were arriving the next day were good cricketers. I figured that by the time he realised that most of them hadn’t played cricket in 15 years, they at least would have one over, or one innings, to show for their expensive trip to Warsaw.

As it turned out, they all did much more than that. When Hardeep said in our first pre-match huddle that “Ukraine is fighting, so we also must fight”, we listened. Every one of us gave everything we had.

Ukraine huddle before a game

Tim is part of a ‘friends of Ukraine’ group at a political party in the UK. Arriving in Stare Babice in the early hours on the Friday, a few hours later he bowled two overs of slow spin against Lithuania. After a nervous start, which sent a couple of us running into the corn field over the boundary, he very nearly took a wicket.

(Tim also set up a fundraising page for our two charities, which lots of our players and supporters contributed to. It raised much more than his target – we are the first sports team that can truly say that we gave 174%.)

Stu and Jenny were on holiday in Krakow, but, remembering some previous trips to Kyiv, they took a long detour to join us for the weekend. Stu batted bravely against Iceland and Latvia – and, wearing a bandana in Ukrainian yellow and blue, threw himself around in the field.

Jenny was ready to play for us too, but the umpires wouldn’t let her, “in case she gets hurt”. Instead she cheered us on from the boundary – while the burly men who were allowed to play called for the magic spray every time the ball hit them.

Jonathan B. is a longtime friend of Ukraine, and edits the information portal Tochnyi, which publishes verified news about the war. Jonathan spent part of one night on the floor at Krakow airport, and arrived in Warsaw exhausted, before playing against Iceland the same morning. 

The next day he took two very tough catches against Latvia. The second catch was off his own bowling – at the time when he should already have long since arrived at Warsaw’s airport for his flight home.

Unlike the rest of us, John still plays a lot of cricket. By the time he got to Poland he had played over 40 matches this year already, in a season that began in Sri Lanka and might end in Argentina. With a hundred stories to keep our spirits up, John kept wicket in our first three matches, and top scored with 21 against Poland.

Ian, a professor working in Warsaw, last played cricket in Canada. But he had also spent time in Ukraine, and his book about fascism in Putin’s Russia aligned him with our cause. Ian battled as hard as anyone in batting in the rain against Iceland.

Ukrainian Misha hadn’t played cricket in four years, but hit one of the shots of the tournament – a cut for four against Latvia.

I literally wrote the book about Ukrainian cricket, and no-one – not even his father – had ever told me that Misha bowls. He took the ball near the end of the Latvian innings, bowled three overs of trustworthy medium pace, and got out two of the tournament’s best batters. 

We all went absolutely wild.

Ukraine batters walk out

Of the other Ukrainians and honorary Ukrainians, Hardeep opened the batting and bowling. Wahab scored the only 50 of our tournament, against Lithuania, and took most of our wickets. 

When the final match was played, there was a three-way tie for points at the top of the table. It all went down to ‘net run rate’ (NRR – the difference between the average number of runs scored per over, and the average number of runs conceded). Poland took the title, a tiny amount ahead of Latvia and Iceland. Lithuania, a very good team, finished fourth.

In a competition between five Eurovision mainstays, Ukraine finished on nil points. Our own NRR was minus 7.5. In other words, on average, our opponents scored 150 runs more than us each match.

It was a ridiculous team to put out in a serious cricket tournament. And that’s before the three Ukrainians who had no idea what cricket is… 

Borys, Dmytro and Ilya threw themselves into being Ukraine’s latest cricketers. Even if their cricket careers only lasted for about two hours, our match against Iceland was still enough time for them to experience a rain break, be part of a batting collapse, sign some jerseys, and pose for team photos. Ilya even scored a run. 

Seeing as Iceland bowled us out for 20, they only had to field for 8 balls.

Ukraine squad

If there was no mercy being shown out on the astroturf pitch, on the other side of the boundary, the mood was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of easy.

Each game began with a cap presentation ceremony, for the new players joining the Ukraine cricket family. People who met each other 10 minutes before a match would go for dinner together that evening.

Opposing teams also got on brilliantly. The Lithuanian team insisted that John and I sat down with them to share their lunch while another game was on.

I also badly misjudged how much the guys we borrowed would care about our causes. To answer our call, Asir and Muneeb had taken a bus 350km from Wroclaw. They wrote in the group chat during their four-hour journey: ‘Anything for our Ukrainian brothers’. After all that, Muneeb took two catches that would grace a professional cricket match.

Durai phoned in sick from work to play for us, then made a donation to Tim’s fundraising page that left us speechless…

While all five teams chatted on the field in loud Hindi and Urdu, we spoke in a blend of Ukrainian and English as well. Coming from many different actual nationalities, at the start of every match we would get into a huddle, stack our different-coloured hands in a pile, and shout: “Slava Ukraini!”

I kept wicket in our last match, against Latvia. Diving on the rough grass to stop Kanna’s rapid wides gave me cuts and bruises; later, a ball from Paramjit knocked the cap off my head.

My batting was less valiant: a slice through the covers against Poland, a bunt to mid-on against Iceland, and two scampered edges against Latvia. But I stayed in for as long as I could: when the tournament statistics appear on the app, I am officially the slowest batter in Europe. 

But I don’t care. We had raised a lot of money for wounded Ukrainian soldiers, and vulnerable adults and children. When I walked off the field for the last time as an international cricketer, my yellow and blue jersey had marks from my blood, sweat and tears. 

This article originally appeared on "Eurasian Echoes" and is reproduced with kind permission of the author. Jonathan Campion is the author of "Getting Out: The Ukrainian Cricket Team's Last Stand on the Front Lines of War", available from Pitch Publishing.