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Apparently cricket is the fastest growing sport in Canada, but I'm not sure how popular baseball is in that country.
Two MLB teams, one of which won their World Series a couple of times, and the 'farm team' AAA and AA system that feeds it. Baseball is big biz and deeply entrenched.
well another problem is weather. its cold most of the time so you can only really play indoors during winter.
well another problem is weather. its cold most of the time so you can only really play indoors during winter.
Two MLB teams, one of which won their World Series a couple of times, and the 'farm team' AAA and AA system that feeds it. Baseball is big biz and deeply entrenched.
I don't think that's the reason because Baseball can't be played outside in winter too but they still play it.
Two teams??
Unless the Ethnic canadians start to play cricket , the game will never ever make it big in the country . Asians playing cricket in canada will not help . Does anyone know if the ethnic canadians who mostly like Ice Hockey play any sort of cricket?
lol nope, not even close, they are too much into their hockey and football (rugby). Cricket isn't even in the list.
Unless the Ethnic canadians start to play cricket , the game will never ever make it big in the country . Asians playing cricket in canada will not help . Does anyone know if the ethnic canadians who mostly like Ice Hockey play any sort of cricket?
Off-topic Harv, but do you ever stay at home mate?When I was over there last Summer.
I don't think cricket is going to overhaul baseball anytime soon, but there's no reason why it can't continue to grow in popularity if promoted in the right way. I don't see why there's an obsession with making cricket more popular than football, baseball, etc. in any case.
I asked about baseball and Canada because I wasn't sure how popular the sport was in that country (I assumed it's not as popular as in America), and I know that there's no way in hell that cricket ever gets close to ice hockey.
Toronto Blue Jays and Montreal Expos as I recall.
Expos moved away awhile ago. To be quite honest Jays haven't done anything since their back-to-back world series so their support isn't greatest. Even then baseball is and will be much more popular. The reason being is the time it takes to complete a cricket match. Anyone who's heard of cricket seem to have only heard of test format and they shake their heads at a 5 day match.
But the biggest reason is hockey. Hockey is deeply rooted in Canadians and for a good reason, love fast-paced up and down action. Almost every kid plays hockey growing up and Canada's is the best at it.
Baseball came number of years ago and is still losing. Canada's has lost a Major League team in Expos, few AAA teams in Cannons etc. With only Jays. Most kids play baseball but don't have the desire to pursue it professionally. A recent article actually showed less and less kids are registering for youth leagues.
Basketball came 15-16 years ago with 2 teams and we lost one of them in Grizzlies. Raptors are constantly fighting to keep their stars, they've basically gone towards drafting, bringing in European players so they don't bolt right away. Among the youth, basketball is very popular in the Ontario region, they're producing some elite talent but outside of Ontario maybe there is some talent in BC area but almost nothing elsewhere.
NFL is well liked in Canada but we got no teams even though Toronto has been trying to bring in one for number of years. CFL is popular is cities where there are teams. Lots of football playing teenagers in Canada that end up playing at CIS and NCAA level.
Soccer is entering in Canada AGAIN but its failed too many times to be ever taken seriously here.
You can combine all other sports, league and they would still be well behind hockey. Cricket can come in and be very popular among South Asians, Ausies, English etc, the folks who've seen and have knowledge about cricket. Other then that, its very hard to get Canadians to spend their resources on anything other then hockey. And for that reason alone, cricket will not surpass even baseball in Canada.
Big names fro baseball to cricket just sounds dumb. What makes you think they'd succeed? The same applies for the opposite situation.
The requirements for baseball are pretty different from cricket. They concentrate a lot more on power than anything else, pitcher's throw some very fast balls too. I doubt they could adjust to the cricketing rules and still keep there speeds.
Not talking about bowlers/pitchers here. But things like batting (sloggers especially) is transferrable I reckon. Will take practice and training but it is possible IMO.
Doubt it. Have you held a baseball bat? No way a professional from one sport can change over to another sport and still be amazing, there's been a few multi sport athletes but they'd essentially be wasting the years they've invested in learning their sport.
Canada captain Rizwan Cheema talks about how the lack of professionalism from the board and the players is hurting the game in the country
Rizwan Cheema is in the last phase of his career. He knows it could have, nay, should have, gone better. In 2008 the world lay outside the door of Canadian cricket and Cheema looked set to make a name for himself as a destructive hitter. Already 30 years old on his debut, he set to work in a hurry. There was no time to play himself in; he wanted to make an impact immediately, and he did, looking untroubled during that golden home season, facing the bowling attacks of West Indies, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and clouting sixes at will. That October was one of unseasonable warmth in Toronto, and Cheema's form with the bat meant that winter, which is always at Canadian cricket's gate, would be kept at bay for a while longer.
Fast-forward some six years to the 2015 World T20 Qualifier in Scotland and Ireland and Cheema brings Stannis Baratheon from Game of Thrones to mind - sword drawn, watching the Bolton army approach, knowing this is going to be a rout, knowing that it should never have to come this, knowing that he is better than this. And that his team too was better than this.
Canada went into the tournament optimistic about finally getting back on Broadway, but before the tournament even began, players began dropping off with fitness issues and due to confusing selection issues typical of Canada cricket. As captain, Cheema could only fume at his decimated ranks as a return to cricket's main stage slipped out of reach.
Cheema knows what Canadian cricket has lost in the last two years and what it continues to haemorrhage. Dropping down to Division 3, losing ODI status, missing out on the World T20 again - he knows there is no easy way back. His own career for Canada hangs in the balance, but true to form he pulls no punches in assessing where Canadian cricket currently stands.
"The day the team needs you, you say you're injured - I don't understand that. Our physio asked me, 'What kind of injuries are these? One day it's on one side, the other day it's on the other side. Are these guys serious?'"
"There's no future for the Canadian team until the system improves," Cheema says. "There's no cricket planned for us. There's nothing for Canada to look forward to until another qualifier comes around. Once you slip down the pecking order [in Associate cricket] it's hard to climb out. It's hard to even have players for the team. If there's no career as a cricketer, how do you keep your players interested?
"When we lost ODI status [at the World Cup Qualifier in 2014] I was not in the team, but I was so depressed. I felt like no one at the board truly understood what this meant - the magnitude of this loss for our cricket and what it would take to get it back."
Cheema's list of frustrations with Canadian cricket is long, but team selection and player compensation are particular bugbears.
"You can be practising with someone and a week before a tour you don't even know who will be going. As a captain it makes it very hard to plan. I look at Ireland, Netherlands and Afghanistan. They keep their teams largely intact. There's continuity there. At the 2015 World Cup Qualifier, we changed seven players as well as the coach from the previous tournament just a few weeks earlier. How is the team going to do well?
"After the 2011 World Cup we included six to eight kids from the Under-19 team. You need youth in a team, but we put in too many players who were not experienced or even mature enough to play for Canada, and I should say there are a few of those who are still around and still haven't matured. The Canada cap came too easily for too many players. It doesn't take much to get selected for Canada, but once you're selected you should at least play with your full commitment."
Cheema cites the World T20 Qualifier as symptomatic of many of the ills plaguing the team.
"There are guys [in the team] who won't put their hand up when the team needs them. Just having talent is not enough. In T20 cricket there's no room for selfishness. In 50-over cricket you can still play for yourself - score a hundred and it benefits the team. But in T20 cricket sometimes you'll get ten overs to bat and sometimes only four balls, and people don't understand this very basic thing. I told the team I don't care about anyone's individual performance or how fast you can bowl - tell me what you've done for the team. Every ball I've ever faced, every ball I've ever fielded, I did it with passion and pride in representing Canada. If you want to play for Canada it has to mean a lot to you, or there's no point. We had players more focused on what was happening with their club back in Toronto than how we as the national team were doing."
Cheema says that Canada's preparation for the World T20 Qualifier was so poor that prior to departure the squad didn't have a single practice session. He is also particularly aggrieved that no fitness tests were conducted before departure and that Canada went to the Qualifier with players of questionable fitness, who started dropping off once the tournament began. Worse, there were those who the captain suspects were not injured at all but simply balked when the going got tough.
"I am disappointed in the players who hid their injuries and went to the tournament but couldn't play a match. This isn't fair to your team-mates or the country. I've played with broken fingers all taped up. I played the whole 2011 World Cup with an injured elbow. You have to man up when you're representing your country. If someone says, 'Oh my shoulder is hurting' - that's nothing. The day the team needs you, you say you're injured - I don't understand that. Even our physio was amazed. He asked me, 'What kind of injuries are these? One day it's on one side, the other day it's on the other side. Are these guys serious?' In the last match we were literally down to 11 players. One more injury and we couldn't have fielded an XI. There wasn't even anyone who could run and bring water."
"It's not the players' problem that the board is short of funds. If it's somebody's job to secure sponsorship and they haven't done that, why are they still around?"
Cheema says there are cricketers in Canada who have the drive and the right attitude, but in Canadian cricket's greatly diminished circumstances, the practical realities of life coming in the way of cricket are unavoidable. It may well spell the end of his own international career.
"Money isn't everything, but the truth is that if I don't have the resources to train properly then I can't compete at the highest level. I don't get paid enough to be able to focus just on cricket. Cricket is my passion - the only thing I've ever loved is cricket, but if you're playing international cricket, you have to give it your best shot. I feel embarrassed when I'm not good enough. If I don't have the resources to stay fit for international cricket and support myself, I don't want to play just for the sake of playing."
While Cheema maintains that he wants to continue playing for Canada, what he expects from the board, especially now, seems beyond its reach to deliver. Cricket Canada is notorious for being cash-strapped, but it's a position that Cheema has no sympathy for.
"There are people at Cricket Canada whose job it is to make sure the organisation has money to function properly and pay its players. It's not the players' problem that the board is short of funds. If it's somebody's job to secure sponsorship and they haven't done that, why are they still around?"
It is a fair question. Cricket Canada is not an organisation where officials are known to step down after a calamitous performance or failure to deliver on an undertaking. Players, though, have been known to walk away. Former captain Ashish Bagai did it. And Cheema may well be on his way too.
While Cheema always talked about his desire to take on the best players in the world and be known as a destructive hitter, it's not the World Cup warm-up boundary-fest against England, or the T20 bludgeoning of Sri Lanka, or the ferocious 89 against West Indies that he cites as his career highlight. It's Canada's 2009 World Cup Qualifier win against Kenya, where he scored 49 off 24 balls. "That win put us in the 2011 World Cup," he says with pride, before adding, "hitting Muttiah Muralitharan for two sixes in the World Cup was also pretty special. No one else did that."
The day the team needs you, you say you're injured - I don't understand that. Our physio asked me, 'What kind of injuries are these? One day it's on one side, the other day it's on the other side. Are these guys serious?'"
At the 2015 World Cup Qualifier, we changed seven players
After the 2011 World Cup we included six to eight kids from the Under-19 team. You need youth in a team, but we put in too many players who were not experienced or even mature enough to play for Canada, and I should say there are a few of those who are still around and still haven't matured.
We had players more focused on what was happening with their club back in Toronto than how we as the national team were doing."
Cheema says that Canada's preparation for the World T20 Qualifier was so poor that prior to departure the squad didn't have a single practice session. He is also particularly aggrieved that no fitness tests were conducted before departure and that Canada went to the Qualifier with players of questionable fitness, who started dropping off once the tournament began. Worse, there were those who the captain suspects were not injured at all but simply balked when the going got tough.
Money isn't everything, but the truth is that if I don't have the resources to train properly then I can't compete at the highest level. I don't get paid enough to be able to focus just on cricket.
Not happening in our lifetime , people think there are too many rules in cricket .![]()
Was in Toronto for a day 2 weeks ago.
I legit haven’t seen so many brown people in one place at the same time outside Pakistan. Not even in Dubai lol
There are many brown people but cricket is not that popular. Most brown folks here are into basketball and other western sports. Cricket is gaining in popularity but it has a long way to go.
Cricket is currently behind basketball, soccer, ice hockey, baseball, and possibly even volleyball.