Event Diaries: APEX Cricket Festival

I stepped into the world of APEX a year ago, an unknown realm of possibility. As Event Manager, I had been tasked with the job of bringing this idea to life. Event manager you may ask… as someone who knows nothing about cricket? I was asking myself the same thing. Although, it wasn’t something that concerned me until I attended the launch.

 

There were plenty of those ah-ha moments, putting faces to names I’d been emailing for the past three months, exchanging the usual pleasantries: ‘thanks for coming’, ‘how was your journey’ and ‘looking forward to the event’. Naturally, as you’d expect at a cricket festival launch, the conversation quickly turned to cricket. That’s when I’d deploy my trusted tactic: laugh, nod, and politely slip out of the circle (also known as the Irish goodbye). After contributing absolutely nothing to several cricket chats, I knew I had my work cut out for me, not just in planning a multi-day tournament, but in learning the basics of the game.

 

The night before the festival, in the calm before the chaos, I made a promise to myself: over the next four days, surrounded by constant cricket and some of the most successful people in the sport, I would learn at least five rules. Or at the very least, finally understand why everyone kept talking about ducks.

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My introduction to cricket came via a crash course from not one, but five different members of the team. Each one tried to explain the game to me: in five-minute bursts between pitch visits, mid-gazebo construction, and while blue-tacking player names to boarding house doors. It quickly became clear that ‘duck’ was the least complicated term in cricket. With the sport’s rich history came a deep well of jargon, interpretations, formats and traditions. It wasn’t enough to know the basic rules, you had to understand the language of cricket.

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Eventually, after a day of sensory overload and early-onset cricket fatigue, we decided to switch tactics and go for an “immersive” approach. While the players were enjoying asado-pit BBQ on the green and organising their own boys-vs-girls volleyball match, we seized our opportunity.

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Cricket bat in hand, I got into position. My bowler? Sir Andrew Strauss. Yes, that Andrew Strauss. Just as you don’t need to follow tennis to know who Andy Murray is, even I understood the significance of the moment.

Feet shoulder-width apart, slight bend in the knees, eyes on the ball – so far, so good. With a windmill motion, Andrew released the ball. And that’s when I froze.

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It was as though my feet were set in concrete. With the ball hurtling toward me, all I managed was an awkward, T-Rex-like swat to protect myself from imminent injury. I gently placed the bat down on the pitch and stepped aside, handing over to a group of much more coordinated volunteers. So much for immersion.

 

186 phone calls, 239 text messages and 5 broken fingers later, I found myself at the award ceremony, no closer to understanding the game but a whole lot more enlightened as to what it takes to pull off a cricket festival and the unexpected lessons learned along the way.

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Here’s what I learned, from the boundary line and beyond:

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1. Cricket is a Culture, Not Just a Game

One of the biggest surprises? Cricket isn’t just a sport. It’s a living, breathing culture with its own language, rituals, and rhythm. There’s an unspoken etiquette about when to clap, when to cheer, and when to stay silent. Spectators knew the game inside out, able to interpret each flick of the bat, every signal from the umpire, and even the subtle body language between teammates. To someone like me, who was still confusing innings with overs, it was this unspoken code I was not yet privy to.

 

  2.  People Make the Game (and the Event)

While I didn’t fully grasp the intricacies of the LBW rule or the nuances of a googly, I did understand passion. Whether it was the ground staff who knew every blade of grass on the pitch, or the players who’d flown in from all over the country, each person had a story. Conversations I expected to be technical ended up being deeply personal: childhood memories of backyard cricket, the thrill of a first six, the camaraderie of playing through rain delays. I began to see why this game mattered.

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Even more striking was the spirit of collaboration behind the scenes. Our team, made up of seasoned pros and first-time volunteers, operated like a well-oiled machine (albeit a slightly sleep-deprived one). The chaos was constant, but somehow, solutions always came just in time.

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  3.  You Don’t Have to Know the Game to Love the Atmosphere
The beauty of APEX wasn’t just in the cricket; it was in the moments around it. The early-morning stillness before players arrived. The burst of applause as someone (I later learned) hit a century. The smell of the barbecue drifting over the pitch as the sun set. The kids chasing rogue balls in the outfield. I didn’t need to understand every rule to feel the energy of it all.

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There was a kind of theatre to the event: carefully choreographed chaos punctuated by bursts of brilliance. Each match was a story unfolding, and even if I didn’t catch every detail, I felt part of the narrative.

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  4.  Preparation is Everything… and Nothing Goes to Plan
Despite the countless spreadsheets and colour-coded schedules, there’s always something you can't prepare for: a broken sound system, a team arriving 40 minutes late, an umpire getting lost on the way to the pitch. It’s in these moments that I really discovered what it means to manage an event, not just plan it. The ability to adapt, stay calm, make fast decisions, and still make people feel like everything’s under control (even when you’re desperately googling “how long is a cricket match?” under the table).

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  5.  Ducks are Not Birds (and Other Key Takeaways)
In case you're wondering: a “duck” is when a player gets out without scoring any runs. Apparently, it's kind of a big deal – and not the good kind. I also learned that “a maiden over” has nothing to do with Shakespeare, “sledging” isn’t a winter sport, and “a golden duck” sounds like something you'd want but definitely isn’t.

So, did I meet my goal of learning five cricket rules? Just about. But more importantly, I learned something better: how to stay curious, laugh at your own mistakes, and embrace the madness of event day.

In the end, the APEX Cricket Festival wasn’t just about cricket. It was about people, passion, community, and a whole lot of cable-ties. I may not be able to explain the Duckworth-Lewis method, but I can tell you what makes a great event: good coffee, better people, and just enough chaos to keep things interesting.

 

See you next year – and next time, I’m bringing a fan.