The Brampton-Etobicoke & District Cricket League 2020 season started last Saturday (August 8, 2020). Play included both the 50-over League and the T25 Morning League. The 50-over league from Elite thru Division 2 is operating with two conferences of four teams per Division, while Division 3 has just one conference of 4 teams.
Due to the shortened season, the T25 Morning League has become an all-day league with 3 sets of games scheduled on regular season playing days, Saturdays and Sundays. One set of games will have an early morning start with a second set of games scheduled to start around the middle of the day and a third set of games with a late afternoon start (4pm).
Clubs were given the option to play or to withdraw this season due to the unusual situation arising from the COVID-19 emergency situation and the late start to the season. The Brampton- Etobicoke & District Board had provided advisories to clubs and made use of video conferencing to confirm the participating clubs before creating the playing schedules.
The Brampton-Etobicoke league’s leadership noticed the paragraph by the Government of Ontario about recreational sports leagues that began “Leagues must contain no more than 50 participants total.” and adopted wording to subdivide into “Divisions” and “Conferences” and ended up holding a virtual meeting involving the Board and the clubs on the evening of July 21, 2020. The overall structure of divisions with 4 teams was adopted for 50-over and T25 competitions with each team playing the other teams in the division three times.
The July 21, 2020 virtual meeting allowed the clubs to re-consider if each wished to play or withdraw from this season and after the response deadline had been set it became time for a new and third version of the schedule for this modified 2020 season to be produced.
Possibly the Government of Ontario will revise some of the regulations for Stage 3 to ensure certain important words such as “participants” are properly defined: it appeared to me to mean “players” in the context of the event that announced certain regions of Ontario were about to officially progress to Stage 3 on the coming Friday. The Brampton-Etobicoke & District Cricket League (BEDCL) seem to have reached a similar conclusion and acted appropriately in my opinion. The fact that cricket, a relatively non-contact sport, has been able to resume over the last two weekends since Toronto (which includes Etobicoke to the west and Scarborough to the east), Mississauga, Brampton and Burlington progressed to Stage 3 demonstrates support from the municipalities.
Spreadsheets with the new schedules for the League have been posted on the BEDCL’s website and play has begun for the season. Perhaps if the Government of Ontario amends some of the original Stage 3 regulations it may become possible for playoffs to take place between conference winners in BEDCL Divisions that have more than one conference.
This seems to have become the Year of the Participants, which include the players, scorers and umpires at the grounds. May all stay healthy and survive in the heat and humidity which has great
appeal to some but not others!
It made no sense in many ways that I decided to pop up to Etobcioke’s Centennial Park last Saturday to take a look. It turns out that no game was on the Brampton-Etobicoke & District Cricket League’s schedule for pitch B and there was no game in progress on pitch A as the Etobicoke District Cricket League had concluded amongst the confusion of this summer to cancel their 2020 season.
Perhaps “waiting” would have been a better word than “confusion”. Waiting for decisions by the Government of Ontario which would then impact what the municipalities could do regarding opening up sports facilities such as cricket nets and fields for use by whoever. Ontario Stage 2 had allowed for limited practice, including use of batting cages (cricket nets), and training to a maximum of 10 people.
The importance of noticing and interpreting words in Government media releases and official documents as well as having a working relationship with the municipalities has been underlined this summer. It can be a very time consuming activity.
I read and re-read a number of Government of Ontario documents in the week or two following the first announcements about certain regions moving to Stage 3. The cloudy opening of team sports writings are relatively clear compared with a one year progress report about the 91 issues raised in the July 2019 Inquiry Report about certain incidents in some of Ontario’s Long Term Care Homes. A listing of progress for each of the 91 issues did not include either the detailed version of each finding or a summary version. Far from impressive, although the Ontario Premier would disagree. The Ontario Premier was upset by some specific criticism from the Leader of the Opposition in the Ontario Legislature.
Progress on some, if not several, of the reported issues in the 2019 Inquiry Report has been made as a result of responses and enhancements needed during this year’s emergency situation. Some light shining through the darkness. Let’s hope things continue to improve on the COVID-19 front in Ontario, across all of Canada and throughout our world.
Brampton-Etobicoke & District Cricket League Structure for the 2020 Season
The 50-over Elite Division Conference A comprises Btown Warriors, Jhanvi, Phoenix and Punjab while Conference B consists of Cosmos B, India Sports, Toronto Woodlands and Universal Thunder.
The Super Elite A Division of the the traditionally Morning T25 competition has 8 teams divided into two conferences of 4 teams. The Super Elite B Divisions has 12 teams who are divided into three conferences of 4 teams.
The Elite A and B divisions, the Premier A and B Divisions, Premier A and B Divisions, Division 1A and Divisions 2A each have 8 teams who are separated into two conferences, each conference having 4 teams. Division 3 has 4 teams.
Cricket matches could only be played in Ontario after a particular Ontario region – and the municipalities within a region – was moved to Stage 3 in the Ontario Government’s emergency classification scheme. It then takes time to confirm the availability of grounds and allocate them to games on the latest emergency season schedule.
Eddie Norfolk Toronto,
August 11, 2020.