Ami Afriatni & Wimbo Satwiko

Unheralded Sports Emerge In Crowded Indonesian Landscape

Football and badminton are unquestionably the top sports in Indonesia.

While they dominated the headlines in 2009, some lesser-known sports managed to make inroads and establish themselves in the country. Baseball, cricket, softball and rugby all had reason to celebrate in the past year.

Cricket made some of the largest waves, receiving a pair of awards from the International Cricket Council’s East Asia-Pacific region in March. Indonesia won the Best Junior Cricket Initiative award for its Under-15 Ultra Milk development program, and former Cricket Indonesia president Alan Wilson received the Lifetime Services award for his work in promoting the game.

“This is a sustainable development program in which we involve all the stakeholders: schools, teachers, local government and even KONI,” Cricket Indonesia advisory board chairman Sachin Gopalan said.

The development program aims to encourage more than 22,000 young children to play cricket in 500 schools and 15 provinces throughout the country.

Indonesia also started making a name for itself in the region with appearances in the ICC EAP U-19 Cricket Trophy in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in May, the U-15 Cricket 8s Trophy in Jakarta in July, and the Senior National Team Trophy in Samoa in September.

Rugby, another sport largely associated with expats, enjoyed a good year. The Indonesia Rhinos finished fourth in the first year of the Asian 5 Nations Division 3, and the Harimau sevens team made its international debut at the Borneo Sevens tournament in October, part of the International Rugby Board’s Asian Sevens Series.

Pieter Wattimena, the Indonesian Rugby Football Union president, said the sport needed recognition from the Ministry of Youth and Sport and the Indonesian National Sports Committee (KONI) to further its development. KONI recognition may be some ways away as national associations need 16 regional offices for membership and the IRFU currently has 12 clubs in eight provinces.

Its prospects received a boost, though, after the International Olympic Committee added rugby sevens as one of the official sports for the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Baseball and softball are already KONI members, but their main problem in 2009 was a lack of funds. That shortfall nearly forced them into embarrassing withdrawals from regional and world tournaments.

The Indonesian baseball team qualified for the Asian Championship in Tokyo in May, while the country also reached the World Men’s Softball Championship in Saskatoon, Canada, in July. A lack of funding nearly made the Indonesian Baseball and Softball Federation (Perbasasi) choose which team to send and which one to withdraw, but a softball club owner and Japan Airlines stepped in at the last minute to ease the federation’s burden.

“We had to send them to international competitions because it will help to develop the players’ skill,” Perbasasi president Gugun Yudinar said. “Our top goal is to be the champion when Indonesia hosts the 2011 Southeast Asian Games.”

Indonesia, which won the second-tier Asian Cup in Thailand to qualify for the championship, lost to Japan, Thailand and the Philippines in Tokyo. It missed out on the top six and did not qualify for the 2010 Asian Games.

In Canada, the softball team lost all seven of its games to finish last in Pool B. Indonesia

Your View

See Result