Having earned its place in the Cricket World Cup Qualifiers 2018, Nepal stands on the cusp of cricketing glory. A victory in the WC will be unimaginably huge for both the cricketers personally as well as the country, which will mean monetary, goodwill and branding windfall.

How can one forget the inimitable former Indian captain and railway ticket collector Mahendra Singh Dhoni who put himself and his hometown Ranchi in the world map? Cricket has indeed come a long way since the days of pioneering cricketers like Sir Donald Bradman and Sir Gary Sobers.

Over the decades, the game received continuous shine and improvisation in all departments like batting, bowling, fielding and behind the stumps in the hands of wizards, to name just a handful, like Sir Vivian Richards, Clive Lloyd, Andy Roberts, Denise Lillee, Jeff Thompson, Bedi, Prasanna, Chandrasekher, Farouk Engineer, Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Ajit Wadekar, Kapil Dev, Tony Greig, Alan Knot, Imran Khan, Afridi and the man nicknamed the Rawalpindi express. The names that still stand out in fielding are Eknath Solkar and Jonty Rhodes. The list is long. Then there was the maverick Australian billionaire, Kerry Packer, who changed the game forever by coming up with day-and-night limited over format with highly paid rebel players. He wrote the script of the game for TV audience with players donning colourful uniforms.

As a pioneer of a rebel format, he paid for his efforts with his own share of struggles, fights and frustrations that affected his business at the time. But today we cannot but applaud the genius of this man as cricket continues to go into lucrative and money-spinning Twenty20 format. Cricket could not stay immune to politics. South Africa was kept out of cricket as in all other games for years.

Nepal has a golden opportunity to storm into the sport just as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan did and have now done.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu

Street children

I was really moved by looking at the very first article which is based about the life of street children, mainly in the Kathmandu city. What can be said for certain is that they are really not receiving any parental love, care, mercy and even support due to which their life has become a whole lot of mess. Many of these children are also found begging for money just in the name of earning a livelihood. Education which is important to shape one’s career is found missing when it comes to their context. So the article which you have showcased to us also puts light on the fact about how to change their life positively by making them educated, capable, smart and healthy humans. It really talks about development of children’s right from their tender age.

Pratik Shrestha, Buddhanagar