Pakistanis pitch help to Vatican cricketers

Governor Ishrat ul Elbad donates cheque, bats to St. Peter's Club

Governor Ishrat ul Ebad (middle) presents a bat to Father Robert McCulloch, an Australian priest, and Aamir Bhatti, a Pakistani seminarian and St. Peter's Club Player July 8. Photo credit: Vatican Radio.)

A Pakistani government official gave a cheque and six made-in-Pakistan cricket bats to St. Peter's Club July 8.

They were “a gift for our friends in the Vatican as a token of friendship,” Governor Ishrat ul Elbad said.

The team is a club of Catholic priests and seminarians in Rome: eight Indians, two Sri Lankans and one each from Pakistan, England and Ireland.

St. Peter's will go to the ancestral home of the game, England, to play against a team made up of Anglicans, the so-called Archbishop of Canterbury’s XI, for a charity match in September.