Overview
Summer in Sā:moa brings out scores of keen cricket players, armed with bats like this. But they don’t play cricket as introduced by sailors and missionaries in the 1800s. Instead, they play kilikiti, a distinctly Samoan take on the game.
In kilikiti, each team has as many players as they like – men, women, and children – and two wicket keepers, not one. The ball is made from the fibre of a local tree and the bat from wood lashed with coconut-husk fibre.
This particular bat was gifted to the departing captain of the Avele cricket team in 1936.