Cricket has been played in Israel for as long as there have been South Africans – and Englishmen and Australians, of course – living here. Jerusalem's Cricket Club, however, had to be content with a field not much bigger than the Newland's "Postage Stamp" ground, and apart from a hard strip in the middle it had all the characteristics of a golf bunker.

Open ground is at a premium in Israel and our cricket field in Jerusalem also did duty as a soccer ground. At the end of last season our needle game against Tel Aviv had got underway when fifty local soccer players arrived and demanded the field. My protests that we were in the middle of a game were laughed at. "everybody's standing still, so how could you have started" shouted one of them, leering at my carefully placed three slips and a gulley.

After much fist shaking a rare Middle East compromise was reached. We pulled up our stumps, rolled up our mat and watched soccer for an hour. Terrible soccer it was too.

But flare ups of that kind belong to the past now. When King Hussein of Jordan ordered his troops to open fire on the Israeli half of Jerusalem last June, Im'e sure that nothing could have been further from his mind than the thought that he was doing a service to cricket.

Once the smoke of the Six Day War settled and the barbed wire barriers were pulled down, East and West Jerusalemites got down to the serious business of learning to live together. All kinds of new links were forged between the two sectors of the city and one such contact provided the answer to our cricketing prayers.

One of the two non – South Africans in the regular Jerusalem X1 is the Rev. Richard Thomas, a Cambridge Maths graduate who is doing a five year spell as Headmaster of the Anglican Church School in West Jerusalem. It was a very excited Rev. Thomas who phoned me with the news that we had a new cricket field. He had been to see the headmaster of the St Georges School in what had been Jordanian East Jerusalem and in the grounds of the school was what he unmistakably identified as a cricket field – not much grass on it, though, but big and oval shaped.

Our first practice on the field nearly caused a serious incident – of a quite unexpected kind. Running along the square – leg boundary is the huge building which serves as the Israeli military HQ for Jerusalem and the vicinity. I suppose it was inevitable that the first big hit on the ground should smash one of the window panes in the main entrance. The soldiers on duty were fortunately not trigger happy, although it did take a lot of explaining and apologizing to an irate sergeant – on – duty to get our ball back. We still trouble the military quite regularly but as yet they've not embarked on any reprisal raids against us.

Israeli's on the whole seem to feel remarkably little bitterness towards the Arabs, in spite of everything that has happened and is still happening. In fact they often seem to be overdoing the PR job. Our cricket team felt that it would be a good idea to invite the Arab schoolboys to come and play with us. The offer was made but nothing has come of it. They come out during their breaks – Saturday, our cricket day, is for them a school day – and stand around watching silently. Maybe they resent our using their field; on the other hand cricket might just not appeal to them.

Our attempts at getting Israelis interested in cricket have been just as fruitless. We made one temporary convert, but he returned to soccer, whence he had come. Can't blame him, seeing that Israeli summer temperatures often remain in the high nineties for days on end, and he spent most of his brief cricket career fielding.

What a commentator's paradise the cricket ground in Jerusalem is, and how Charles Fortune would enjoy broadcasting from a sandbagged commentary box high up on top the adjacent military HQ. He could fall back on more than 2000 years of history within eyeshot whenever he found the cricket too much for him. And at lunch time he could stroll through the Arab market in the Old City and come back stocked up with fresh anecdotes to see him through the close of play.

Cricket in Israel received a big fillip a few years ago when large numbers of Indian Jews arrived in the country. Most of them settled in the new development towns and the conditions under which they play their cricket are plain miserable.

They had all heard of Newlands and the Wanderers, but we were the first South Africans they'd ever met. In towns like Dimona and Yeruham – places in the heart of the Negev desert which many Israelis have barely heard of – cricket is the chief social activity. And the dedication and determination with which these fine cricketers play makes one wonder just what it is that this game has and others lack.

It goes without saying that an away game often means a 60-80 mile drive. The road down South now passes through biblical Hebron and the first time we traveled that way I noticed Arab boys strolling along the road, singly and in groups, carrying books and pens. I was amazed to learn that this was an accepted way of doing homework – written as well as learning work. I havn't been able to find out where this practice originates from. It's approved of by the teachers so it can't be that bad.

In Be'er Sheva, a town which would not be out of place in the Karoo, I made friends with some small boys who came to watch our cricket game against the local side. A week later I had to visit a friend at the Be'er Sheva hospital and as I stepped into the lift a cheeky young face popped out from nowhere and said to me "I remember you. You played hockey here last week." The lift door closed quickly, saving me from having to think of a reply.

© Israel Cricket Association