Cats have nine lives. Curiosity killed the cat. It’s a sign of good luck for a black cat to cross your path.
Not the most likely of openings for a tale about Ontario College cricket, but appropriate. It follows a review of the latest information via the internet on the state of cricket in Ontario Colleges with a couple of looks at the National College level and at the Canadian Interuniversity Sports (CIS) situation on cricket. A scene showing limited improvement since an initial check during 2008. Five indoor mens cricket one-day tournaments are shown on the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association’s “On Campus” recreation cricket schedule for the fall and winter terms in 2011-2012.
Four of those tournaments have taken place. Humber College won the event it hosted on November 4th, beating Sheridan College in the Final. Teams from six colleges took part. There remains the University of Toronto Mississauga event due on March 16th, and three “unknown” tournament outcomes. Who knows if any with cricketing interests are participating in sports journalism or sports management at any of our colleges and universities? Or is it the fault of that black cat for failing to report on the progress of the world’s second biggest sport in Ontario colleges this fall and winter?
Someone submitted a tournament summary form for the Humber College event to the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association. This seems to be one of the requirements, whether the information was sent on a timely basis is almost a mute point given the lack of apparent submission from the other three events.
Perhaps the absence of a subject matter expert, or SME, in tournament outcome reporting was a stumbling block for those in the further education world. But someone might have made a move, even only on a local college web-site to highlight the tournament outcome, or report on their own colleges performance in these tournaments? Or would the submission of a basic note on the tournament winner and a set of round-robin standings a more monumental step for person-kind than the one small step for man, one giant step for mankind (or was it a leap?) that took place a couple or so years ago on the moon.
But perhaps that event took place in a Swiss cheese makers premises, hidden somewhere in the Swiss Alps, for those who doubt the science of man reaching the moon.
Humber College beat Sheridan College in the final of the Humber-hosted Nov 4th tournament. Humber is shown with a 4-0 win/loss record, Sheridan went 2-2 , University of Toronto’s Mississauga (UTM) campus went 2-1, Centennial College 1-2, Seneca’s Newnham campus 1-2 and Seneca’s York campus 0-3. UTM and Centennial are marked as having reached the semi-finals, so perhaps overall Humber went 5-0, Sheridan 3-2, UTM 2-2 and Centennial 1-3.
Georgian College was due to host a tournament on December 1st. Centennial’s Progress campus was to host a December 9th event and Sheridan’s Davis Campus in Brampton was due to stage a February 10th gathering of the cricketing clans. There is a photo of a Centennial team on it’s website and some other cricketing pictures without words featured on one of the college websites.
Georgian College won a Humber College tournament on October 25th but perhaps this was not in 2011. They beat UTM by 4 wickets, Humber College by 15 runs and Centennial College before beating Humber College in the final by four wickets.
Cricket is not currently have an official Ontario Colleges Athletic Association indoor or outdoor championship. It does not have a national championship under the banner of the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association, and there is no cricket championship run within the framework of the Canadian Inter-university Sport organization.
In order to gain sponsorship and funding, it tends to be a good idea to seek publicity. The publicity should not just be about “we won” so we’ll send you some information but it needs to go out regardless of who won or lost in order a pattern of reliability. This might impress a journalist or a sports editor or two somewhere. Some publicity relationships might then build which, in turn, might appeal to sponsors, even if those sponsors do not provide thousands or millions of Canadian dollars. They might just pay for some cricket balls, or for umpires, or even scorers, or for a banner or two that could be strategically placed so it features in event photos !
Other than the small step for man on the moon, there is no rocket science in this brief look at cricket in some of our colleges and universities. Somewhere out there is a Mr. Abimanyu Sharma who was passionate about getting cricket on the colleges and universities map in Canada at a cricketing event in 2006. An event where the then Canadian National Cricket coach did not realize that winning the ICC Cricket World Cup was the expectation of some in Canada.
Tall oaks from little acorns grow, but not with the thinking of Ebeneezer Scrooge before the visit of the three ghosts. And not without some care and nurture, or a combination of sun and rain over the longer term. One Cricket Canada official told me “Rome was not built in a day”, but somebody set up some plans and made a start. There were possibly some slaves to do the building and construction work for the Roman leaders. Planning, resourcing and implementation, possibly with refinements to the plan on the way to completing the project. Then maintenance to keep things functioning over time.