A group of 15 cricketers wearing Timmins Tigers sweaters assembled at Bozzer Park last weekend to play the game they have loved since childhood.
The men quickly set up an improvised cricket pitch on the first base side of the baseball diamond at Bozzer Park utilizing a 10 feet by five feet swath of green patio carpet to allow the bowled ball to have a truer bounce without skittering to one side or the other — as it would if bowled on the stony infield.
Samar Thapa, the manager of Timmins Subway franchises as well as one in Chapleau, hails from West Bengal and has been in Timmins for two years and 10 years in Canada overall.
“Being the subcontinent countries like Indian and Pakistan it is the first sport we start playing as children,” explained Thapa. “Field hockey is the national sport of India but cricket is more popular.”
Thapa attributes the rapid growth of cricket as a professional sport over the last several decades, with its own list of internationally recognized heroes, as adding to the popularity of the game among youth on the subcontinent but also in Australia, New Zealand South African, the West Indies and in England where the game originated.
“Kids can get quite serious about the sport in those cricket-playing nations because if they get good it could lead to a good career,” Thapa said.
In India cricket is played throughout the country and the schools all have cricket as part of their physical education program and school teams
“After soccer, cricket arguably is the second most international sport in the world,” Thapa believes.
The Timmins Tigers currently only play in tournaments because they do not have the numbers to field teams in a local league and they also do not have a regulation cricket pitch.
“We have to have a proper pitch to be a league,” said Thapa.
“The first tournament we represented Timmins was hosted by North Bay on the Canada Day weekend,” Thapa said. “Participating teams were from Sudbury, North Bay and Sault Ste. Marie.”
“We were the runners up in our first attempt,” Thapa said proudly. “We have a young team and that is good for our future.”
Recruiting enough players to create two teams so they can practice against each other is a challenging proposition for Thapa and the other 15 who regularly show up to practice.
A cricket team consists of 11 players and a few subs. That would mean that a minimum 22 players must participate to create two teams.
“I estimate that there are about 80 people in the Timmins area from the Indian subcontinent and that would include Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan,” calculated Thapa.
“One way of recruiting new cricketers is to hold cricket clinics in Timmins to introduce local youth to the game,” said Tom Baby Local Integration Partnership Coordinator for the Timmins and District Multicultural Centre.
Despite the shortage of players, the enthusiasm and love of the game drives the group of current players to come with creative solutions to enable to pursue the game they love.
“I had a couple of clients contact me in early summer and they asked me to locate a place from them to play cricket and help them recruit other players,” recalled Melanie-Lynn Lafreniere, Timmins and District Multicultural Settlement Work and Volunteer Coordinator.
“It happened quickly because by July 1 they were playing in a tournament,” she added. “Cricket is well known throughout the world and it gives them a sense of community, exercise and they meet friends and its fun.”
They will practice until the end of September.
If anyone is interested in giving cricket a try please contact the Timmins and District Multicultural Centre [email protected]
Cricket resembles baseball in some respect and is referred to as bat and ball game. It is played by two teams of 11 players each on a cricket field consisting of a 22-yard-long pitch with a wicket consisting of three wooden stumps at each end. Teams take turns being the batting team that tries to score as many runs as possible and the fielding team which tries to prevent runs from being scored. Like baseball each set of play is called an inning. The inning in cricket is over when 10 batsmen have been dismissed.
For more information on cricket please click here. http://www.icc-cricket.com/
