CIMA Toronto Mayor’s team has returned home with a respectable 7 wins out of nine matches played in Surrey, UK. They recorded wins against youth teams from leading Surrey Championship clubs such as Purley CC and Sunbury CC. and lost two closely finished matches against Old Wimbledonians and Stoke D’Abernon CC. The third annual UK tour was facilitated by the Cricket Across The Pond (CAP) scholarship program, a partnership project between the City of Toronto Parks, Forestry & Recreation and CIMA Canada. CAP uses cricket as a vehicle to reach out to youth and promote social cohesion and integration among Toronto’s diverse neighborhoods. The program focuses on instilling values of cricket such as discipline, honesty, respect and integrity. In preparation for their responsible role in the UK, the CAP program provided the young cricketers with leadership and media training in addition to cricket. These sessions were held with the objective of coaching, guiding and mentoring young cricketers to take leadership roles and be role models in their communities.
CAP program is supported in the UK through an inter-City partnership between the City of Toronto and the Borough of Kingston upon Thames, Surrey. Chessington Cricket Club Surrey is the host team for the annual CAP tour to the UK. The former Canadian cricketer Derek Perera and former Toronto Housing Manager Vinod Sharma accompanied the team as the Coach and Manager of the team respectively. Apart from playing against some of the leading Surrey Championship Clubs, the Toronto team also had the opportunity to visit the Lord’s cricket grounds and meet with the President of MCC Mr.John Barclay and the Board officials of MCC. The Toronto team visited Brit Oval as guests of the Surrey Cricket and was received a warm welcome at the Mayor’s office in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey. The tour provided valuable opportunities for the young Toronto team to experience cricket on grass wickets under UK conditions. Inspired by this experience, 12 highly motivated young cricketers returned home with confidence and determination to advance their cricket careers.
The annual CAP program is organized and managed independently by CIMA Canada and selects a players through a comprehensive screening process that evaluates candidates cricket skills and community involvement. Over the last three years 38 young cricketers have been given the opportunity to play cricket under the CAP program. A player can only receive the CAP scholarship once and the program has become very popular among Toronto’s young cricketers. In the last two months the CAP program and many of the young cricketers from the Mayor’s team were profiled in the media. CAP story has helped attract extensive media attention to cricket over the last three years and the following link provides some of the coverage and scores of the 2010 Tour.
http://www.cimacanada.org/uk_tour_2010.jsp