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Whats wrong with Canada cricket?

Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 12:32 pm
by timmyj51
Lets not try to sugar coat it. Canada cricket has been on a downward spiral for years. Gone is the WC. Then
went ODI status. And now down to D3! Why? Pictures tell a thousand words. Look at the team photos of
the Canada national teams from the 60s/70s. What do you see? A cross section of Canada society: Windies players,
Asian players, Brit players even, I think, some mainstream Canucks. Now look at a photo of todays national
team. What do you see? ONLY south Asians. The social support system of the game has SHRUNK, so that it's now
just a game of the south Asian community. The game has no future unless this is REVERSED, and cricket becomes
a NATIONAL, not an ETHNIC game. But I doubt CC sees it this way and my guess is their "big changes" are just
going to be tinkering around the edges: coaching changes, training changes, and more expat recruitment. In
short, the game will continue its downward spiral.

Re: Whats wrong with Canada cricket?

Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2019 2:34 pm
by timmyj51
See there's a petition to have Saini removed. Don't expect much improvement with his
replacement. What a role reversal! Just a few years back Canucks were in the WC while "Team USA"
were losing D5 matches! And now?? :o :o :o

Re: Whats wrong with Canada cricket?

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2019 12:57 am
by Victorian
Anyone reassured by president Saini's video statement? I believe that the CC board puts in a lot of effort and gets no thanks and there is unfair criticism, but then there is a dearth of information and communication. Also, Saini did not offer any commitment to do anything about the state of the game in Canada. CC has three years until the WC qualifying tournament to really get the game going in Canada and get the national team to compete and to develop players and give them opportunities to play at the highest level. There was nothing in this video saying that's what CC is going to do. They're waiting for some sort of reports?

Re: Whats wrong with Canada cricket?

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2019 10:41 am
by timmyj51
Been looking a little closer at the pathways to the WC Qualifier and it seems to me
that the Canucks have an EASIER path than "Team USA." 3 of the 7 D2 teams will
advance to the Qualifier but all seven teams are competitive. In the D3 tourney
only 2 of ten teams advance but the competition is pretty weak. Only HK and
Kenya pose any threats.

Re: Whats wrong with Canada cricket?

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2019 12:51 pm
by ray
^ I think you're misunderstanding the qualification pathway.
WC Qualifier Playoff is a 6 team tournament in 2022.
D3 winners go to WC Qualifier Playoff
Bottom 4 from D2 go to WC Qualifier Playoff
So USA can lose all its D2 matches and still end up no worse than what Canada would achieve in D3 at best.

Top 2 from Playoff go to WC Qualifier (10 teams) featuring bottom 5 from Super League, top 3 from D2 and top 2 from WC Qualifier Playoff

All this according to Wikipedia ... but it does make sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Cric ... _Qualifier

Re: Whats wrong with Canada cricket?

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2019 1:17 pm
by LeScotsman
What's wrong with it? What's right?

It has never been right here. It has always been a castaway cricket colony, entirely dependent on middle aged men who play cricket moving in, and slowly getting worse at cricket. There is no, and never has been, any sensible, inclusive, financially viable, sustainable, developmental model here, only waves and troughs of immigration. Atop that, it has always been run as series of warring, amateur ethnocracies and kleptocracies with very little understanding of how to build a sustainable cricket environment. Even when Canada were at their peak in WCs, none of the players developed their game here - they all flew in from Aus, NZ, West Indies and Sri Lanka in the weeks before. Cricket is invisible here, inaccessible, and not at all fun to most people, competing against 45-hour working weeks, limitless kids activities and youtube. There are only about 3 fields in the entire country where the grass is cut. Imagine trying to launch hockey leagues in Australia in rinks without side boards and filled with 6 inches of snow. There are pockets of promise. There are qualified people, scattered across a continent. There are people who work hard at it, whether they know what they are doing or not. There are international dollars thrown at it with no return. There is the potential for a successful amateur game but I do not believe it will happen. Almost nothing has changed in 250 years of cricket here. Is there any part of Canadian cricket that would be used as a blueprint for success anywhere else? When not understanding you need the grass cut every week is your starting point, nothing much different follows.

Re: Whats wrong with Canada cricket?

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2019 1:18 pm
by timmyj51
The chart I saw didn't have that Playoff tourney between the D2/D3 teams.
If this tourney is, in fact, part of the qualification process it's almost sure to be a rerun of the recently finished D2 tourney
since the bottom four teams from the D2 tourney will likely be Namibia, Oman, PNG, & "Team USA" (Scotland, Dutch likely to
advance, though UAB could lose out) while HK and
Canada will likely be the two from the D3 tourney! ICC up to its old tricks.

Re: Whats wrong with Canada cricket?

Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 1:26 pm
by ray
Victorian wrote:
Tue Apr 30, 2019 12:57 am
Anyone reassured by president Saini's video statement? I believe that the CC board puts in a lot of effort and gets no thanks and there is unfair criticism, but then there is a dearth of information and communication. Also, Saini did not offer any commitment to do anything about the state of the game in Canada. CC has three years until the WC qualifying tournament to really get the game going in Canada and get the national team to compete and to develop players and give them opportunities to play at the highest level. There was nothing in this video saying that's what CC is going to do. They're waiting for some sort of reports?
Finally got a chance to watch the video. Yes, CC board members have thankless jobs. Part of the problem is the board has been so unwilling to provide information about the goals and direction of Cricket Canada in the past. That it took a second term as President and a major setback such as WCL2 failure to get this President to address the cricket community is not helpful to their case. Fortunately, CC seem to finally realize they need to "engage" (as they keep saying) with the public to move cricket forward.

As for development, I am intrigued by the "First Class" league CC was apparently working toward before the events of WCL2 put things aside. I doesn't sound they were very far along in that goal but it needs to be a medium term priority: Canada needs a centrally-located T20 and one-day competition. It means getting the best youth to relocate to T.O. and that the other city leagues become feeders to the central high performance program.

Re: Whats wrong with Canada cricket?

Posted: Sat May 04, 2019 8:50 pm
by timmyj51
Sadly, no one seems "to get it." As always the only suggestions are reshuffling
the expat deck. More practice for expat players/teams. More competition for
expat players/teams. More coaching for expat players/teams. More money for
expat players/teams. Just don't get it
that cricket goes absolutely NOWHERE unless it can go BEYOND the expat community.

Re: Whats wrong with Canada cricket?

Posted: Thu Jun 20, 2019 7:45 pm
by Victorian
I don't know whether to be pleased or insulted. From a Zimbabwe cricket fan forum...

Re: [ Poll ] Has Zimbabwe fallen to Kenya levels?

They are where Kenya was at around 2007-2008. Kenya have fallen further into the abyss since then. They weren't even at the WCQ.

Zimbabwe won't fall that far, but they might fall to the level of a Canada or UAE.