Eddie Norfolk
CIMA Mayor’s Trophy and Asian Community Games in pipeline
On Sunday (June 20) at L’Amoreaux Park in Scarborough (Ontario), cricket fans can gather for a cricket festival that includes a Guyana side plus three select teams from local leagues in 20-20 matches. These form part of the weekend’s Guyana 44th Independence Festival at the park and L’Amoreaux Community Centre. (Both venues are at the intersection of Kennedy Road and McNicholl in Scarborough.) The cricket tournament begins with a celebrity match at 9 am, according to the schedule, then will feature two semi-final matches and a final for the four representative teams. Joining the visiting team from Guyana will be sides representing the Toronto and District Cricket Association, the Scarborough District Cricket League and the Canadian Commonwealth Cricket Association of Toronto.
Admission is by donation and there will be the usual array of food stalls. It should be a lot drier this year than for the last couple of years, if the weather forecast proves accurate. There had been a mammoth drenching from sometime on the Saturday last year, but play went ahead despite the odd pool of water on the outfield. Guyana won the tournament.
Guyanese Trade and Culture events are lined up at the Community Centre for both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday has a sports line-up that includes a softball tournament at the cricket ground, a soccer tournament at Malvern Community Centre (Scarborough) and dominoes.
The Flag Raising and Opening Ceremony at noon on Saturday is due to be broadcast live to Guyana. An interfaith service is set for Sunday morning; Guyana, like Toronto, has a mixture of heritages and people of different faiths. But at the end of the day, we can all come together in sport, music, culture, educationand fellowship. Some realize that the basics of different faiths rest on the notion of respecting the earth and it’s creator as well as respecting other people and all other living things and commodities on which life depends.
We might not all have the same ideas on ‘the common good’ and we might fall out for a while during some sporting event, unhappy at missing a catch or being out but there is always another day…and none of us are perfect.
The overall festival and ‘Taste of Guyana’ takes place under the auspices of the Consulate General of Guyana.
CIMA Mayor’s Trophy set for June 27
The barricades are going up in parts of downtown Toronto as the G8/G20 and some representatives of a few other countries gather next week in the Greater Toronto Area, but all will be welcome to Sunnybrook Park next Saturday (June 27) for the CIMA Mayor’s Trophy event.
CIMA and the City of Toronto Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department have organized this event since 2005, and it has grown in significance. Play will include womens, junior and various private and public sector teams as well as media teams. Hopefully the weather will be kinder that last year when the opening celebrity game took place in rain on a cool day and the final game was terminated by a monumental thunderstorm. But in between times, people enjoyed the cricket.
The CIMA/Toronto Mayor’s XI who will visit Surrey, England, in August was named on Friday (June 18) during a gathering at the Toronto Council Chambers. Mention was also made of progress on ground development, including a new ground at Smithfield School in Etobicoke.
6th Asian Community Games has vacancies for cricket teams
Cricket is due to feature in next weekend’s Greater Toronto Area Asian Community Games (June 27 and June 28). The organizers were hoping for sixteen teams to register and be split into four groups. Group play would involve three matches per team on Saturday with playoffs and the Final on Sunday (June 28).
Team registration (cost $250 per team) is open (as of early on June 18), according to the official website (www.acgames.ca).
Last year the cricket event fell by the wayside, but there had been a successful day at Centennial Park, Etobicoke, in 2008.
The Asian Community Games began in 2005. This year all events are set for the York University Campus in the northern part of Toronto (south of Steeles/west of Keele) with an opening ceremony on the Friday evening (June 26) at the Toronto Track and Field Centre. In addition to cricket, the Games include swimming, track and field, basketball, soccer, volleyball, badminton and table tennis.
“Diversity in action” is embedded in the emblem for the Asian Community Games, which are organized by the Sing Fai Sports Club. Hopefully this year’s cricket event will go ahead, but there is a dependence on folks in the Toronto area cricketing community.
Sadly, some of the off-field cricketing leaders and emperors still seem to be back in the dark ages, if not ancient Greece, Egypt or China, based on observing behaviour patterns at Friday’s launch of the Cricket Across the Pond team to represent Toronto in Surrey this August.
Some cricket leaders have tunnel vision that might need a microscope to allow measurement of the tunnel entrance, although use of electron microscopes would bring us much closer to the present day. Closer, but yet far away. A paradox not just confined to cricket or sport/sports but in the “real world”.
But that is a topic for another day, or even later today. Enjoy your cricket and life.