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"Gezira
Sporting Club cricket field"
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26/9/43 Sunday.
Playing for Maadi Camp again against the South Africans at Gezira. All day game so I went
to church and then straight to cricket. They gave us a real leather hunt by scoring 270
for 4. At one stage they had 200 for none. We only got 170, mine 18. Free meals too. Went
to the pictures in Town later.
The Wogs are getting cocky now and are even assaulting the Services.
Youths are organised in gangs and pinch things off you. We have been told to go in pairs.[Some cynics have suggested
that war for many Kiwis was one long sporting competition punctuated by short bursts of
fighting. Perhaps an exaggeration, but Struan MacGibbon was certainly able to pursue his
pre-war passion for cricket during long spells based at Maadi Camp, the New Zealand
Division’s main North African base, near Cairo. The diaries mention no less than 65
cricket matches played at the camp or in Cairo. Struan played in 56 of them, scoring an
average of 27 runs. He also played cricket during service in Italy and later in England,
where he joined Walter Hadlee and other well-known players in the New Zealand Combined
Services XI.]
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