By MIKE DAVIES, Examiner Sports Director
While Peterborough’s cricket community is small it’s a passionate group with roots in the city’s earliest days.
The Peterborough Cricket Association (PCA) hosted Brampton’s Premier Cricket Club for a Sunday match at Morrow Park. With a membership of approximately 25 players, mostly new Canadians and international students, the local club wants to spread the word about a sport popular all across the world.
Club president Prakash Naganath says cricket was one of Peterborough’s earliest sports.
“Cricket in Peterborough goes way back to the late 1800s,” Naganath said. “There were teams playing in Peterborough from the 1840s and ’50s to the 1870s and as recently as the 1960s. We’ve been able to dig out a lot of old photos from the archives at Trent University. One of Peterborough’s well known citizens Mr. (Richard Birdsall) Rogers is in one of those pictures.”
Cricket historically was played at Nicholls Oval which is now a rugby pitch.
“In the late 1960s and early ’70s it faded out and lacrosse, hockey and soccer took over,” said Naganath. “We’ve been trying to revive the game of cricket in Peterborough since 2003.”
Creation of a proper cricket pitch is proposed in the plans to revamp Morrow Park.
“We’ve approached the city to help us out and they have been very positive in responding to some of our proposals.” he said.
The players come from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds.
“Primarily people who played the sport in England, Scotland and Ireland are the ones who initially started playing the game here,” Naganath said. “Peterborough is primarily an Irish settlement and that’s how the sport migrated from England to the United Kingdom to Peterborough.
“It’s true that primarily the charge is being led by people who have played in some of Great Britain’s colonies like India, Australia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and West Indies, but we do have players from Scotland, Ireland, South Africa and Jamaica.”
Karthik Balachandran, a native of India, moved to Peterborough in January to work as a physiotherapist and found cricket a way to assimilate into the community.
“Everyone plays in India. It’s like hockey here,” Balachandran said. “When I came here the first time I didn’t find anyone from India and wasn’t mingling with the guys. When I knew there was a team here and I started mingling here, it was a good experience.”
The club practices each Tuesday from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Keith Wightman public school. They play games, primarily among themselves, each Sunday, but sometimes travel out of town to play other clubs.
“It’s a good sport which involves a lot of things. You have to run around, it keeps you active and concentrated,” he said. “You have a lot of friends and people to hang around and learn about Peterborough.”
Syed Ali, 46, has been in Canada since 1999 and moved here from Windsor last year to work at GE. He hadn’t played cricket since moving to Canada from Pakistan in his early 30s.
“I started playing again after a long time,” said Ali. “It was my passion when I was in Pakistan.”
One of his co-workers has tried to convince Ali to try baseball, and Ali is trying to convince him to try cricket.
“People who play baseball are very good candidates for cricket. It’s very similar. A little bit different, but it’s similar,” said Ali.
The PCA is hoping to introduce the sport to local elementary schools. Naganath says RBC has a nation-wide program which will donate cricket kits to interested schools. Club officials will attend to demonstrate and instruct the sport. The PCA has already talked with Kawartha Heights, Keith Wightman and Havelock public schools.