Cricket in Trinity, Newfoundland

 

Last Sunday Cricket Newfoundland and Labrador, in conjunction with Provincial Historic Sites, put on a demonstration of cricket as part of the community’s Trinity Days festival.

This is the second year of this partnership; last year two Cricket NL members came up to Port Rexton on Canada Day, and taught local kids about cricket. This year the plan was more ambitious- nine cricketers were on hand to play a demonstration game in the heart of old Trinity.

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Rahul Vashishta tries a hundred year old bat; Rakesh Negi examines another

The teams first visited the Trinity Museum, where the connection of cricket with Trinity’s past is on show. The team examined the two more than a century old bats- small by modern standards, and saw the 1896 photo of the Trinity team that took on teams from St. John’s.

The playing space for the demonstration was picturesque- but on the small side. Pitch preparation consisted of moving some picnic tables to maximise the space available. For safety and practical reasons a tapeball (a tennis ball covered with electrical tape) was used instead of a hard cricket ball. this allowed all to take part without the need for protective equipment, but also kept surrounding buildings, buses, and spectators from harm.

The squad splt into two teams of four, and played out a four over/ side game to a crowd of around 50. Cricket NL secretary Dave Liverman was on hand to explain what the crowd was watching. The whole hearted committment and enthusiasm of the players was evident, with some big hitting, keen fielding involving hurdling fences and streams, and in one case an attempted diving catch into a rose bush that resulted in some minor injury. The crowd soon picked up on how wickets can fall, with catches, run outs, and the stumps flattened by some quick bowling.

play under way

play under way

After the match ended – a quick single off the last ball earning victory, then it was the spectators’ turn. There was considerable interest in trying the game, and some genuine aptitude shown, notably in batting but at least one spectator picked up the difficult skill of bowling rather than throwing a cricket ball very quickly.

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Mark Critch with Purvi, Kranthi, Rahul and Rakesh

Trinity’s other link to cricket is through the film “The Grand Seduction”, and by pure coincidence, one of the film’s stars, Mark Critch, turned up to watch the demonstration. Attempts to pursuede him to show the crowd what he’d learned from the movie’s cricket consultant (Dave Liverman) failed but he was happy to meet the teams and share some tips!

The Cricket NL squad for Trinity was Rakesh Negi, Kranthi Kumar, Adeel Ilyaz, Deep Patel, Amit Sundly, Jeff Smith, Purvi Kalyan, Dave Liverman and Rahul Vashishta – thanks to all of them and to Provincial Historic Sites for the opportunity to showcase cricket in the community. We hope the members of that 1896 team would be pleased to see their favourite sport played in their community again (although they would probably have fancied their chances against a team of townies!)

Note: for those not familiar with the geography of Newfoundland, Trinity is an historic community on the Bonavista Peninsula, about three hours drive from St. John’s.

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Swing and a miss

Bodyline!

Bodyline!

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A talented young batsman

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Cover drive

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