Susceptible to the set-piece, The Dwarfs. There as a time when you couldn’t play cricket for Yorkshire if you weren’t born in the county. You cannot play for Cape Coast Ebusua Dwarfs if you are over four foot tall. Obviously they are fragile defensively, especially with the ball put in the mixer to the big centre-forward, but they all have a low centre of gravity and are much stronger in the middle of the park with the quick turn and change of direction.
The four-foot rule came in because, traditionally on the Cape Coast, tall people were considered unfortunate. A local saying: “He whose head is at owl-foot will not hear the leopard’s breath.” Indeed, there were many cases of people of about 5’8″ being savaged by wild animals, apparently oblivious to their approach owing to the din of birdsong at ear level. Other Ghanaian sayings are “A woman is like a blanket – if you cover yourself with it, it will keep you warm, but you should change it occasionally” and “A crab does not beget a bird”.
No one has ever convincingly explained what either means. Similarly, no one is quite sure why The Dwarfs have a crab as their motif rather than a dwarf, but one explanation is that it is hard to tell on a shirt badge exactly how tall a figure is. Cameron Carter