Ranjit Saini provided a 90 minute interview to Sportstrends Canada covering selection, board structure and priorities, the performance of the senior team and more,
Ray, a regular contributor to our forum, has summarised the interview for those of us who don’t have 90 minutes spare!
Summary:
CC’s Priorities: Youth and Women’s cricket
To help bridge the gap between school cricket (often indoor) and hardball cricket, the President says CC is working to have a youth summer league established in some city for 2020 or 2021. It would allow for youth to learn the longer form of the game (as opposed to T20) and move into the hardball game.
Also since there have been disagreements between Women’s cricket stakeholders, CC is discussing the possibility of taking over responsibility for the women’s game (from of the provincial boards). Also discussing the creation of a “national league” for women.
Global T20 Canada:
CC’s resource problem has been dealt with to a large extend because of association with GT20. Awareness of cricket is growing because of GT20. The tournament will feature an additional Canadian player in the XI per year, eventually reaching 6 Canadians. Training of Canadian players is part of GT20’s responsibility so that quality is maintained.
WCL2 Namibia:
The President again defended CC’s preparation for the 2019 World Cricket League D2 in Namibia. Sri Lanka was chosen to obtain matches against local opposition and because all Canadian players could travel there. He said he had spoken to several players regarding the failure.
Other items:
-Remuneration for Canadian players was mentioned – money for tournament participation and per diems.
-Good relationship with Cricket West Indies
Rebuttal to President Saini’s comments:
Despite defending Canada’s failure to obtain ODI status, the president never actually mentioned what had been learned about why the team failed.
He mentions the growth of cricket awareness due to GT20. However, CC’s website continues to be inadequate in its information updates. It’s social media presence is not that of an organization seeking to engage with the public.
In the discussion of player remuneration, the announced $30,000 player contracts to be provided by Bombay Sports is not mentioned. What happened to this?