Eddie Norfolk
The sun shone brightly over the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club last Sunday afternoon (May 6) as the Valley Park All Stars took on RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) in a T20 match. A game Valley Park won by eight runs.
The game was part of an early season celebration for the Valley Park Middle School’s Go Green Cricket Field project. A development due to provide a cricket field within an ecologically designed upgrade of that part of the Don Valley where the school is located. Dinner and other entertainment was scheduled for Sunday evening as part of a Crazy for Cricket day.

Former Indian international Sunil Joshi captained the Valley Park side. He won the toss and elected to bat, setting the stage for some enterprising batting from opening batsmen Luqman Rafique and Karmran Nazir. Luqman Rafiq made 30 in an opening stand of 63 which ended when he lofted a drive to mid-on around the ninth over. Left-hander Awais Noor made 12 but chipped a catch just behind square on the legside. This brought in Sunil Joshi who neatly turned a ball off his legs for a boundary, but did not make many more runs. Kamran Nazir reached his 50 in the 19 over, then took the total past 150 with a nice boundary shot from the first ball of the 20 over.

Twelve runs came from that final over, so Valley Park All Stars reached 159 for four wickets, with Kamran Nazir 59 not out and Sahil Bharadwaj 12 not out. Khurram Tabassum took two wickets.
Sadly, due to other commitments, I was not able to stay for the RBC innings, but it was good to see people enjoying the game of cricket on a beautiful sunny first Sunday afternoon of May. Indeed, RBC’s Trevor Fernandez later commented “it was a great afternoon and a great event.” Mohammed A.K. Jelani, commenting from a Valley Park perspective that it was “a great event and excellent and glamorous performance by both teams. A great exhibition of strokes from our
team; Kamran Najir, Luqman Rafiq, Awais Noor, Sunil Joshi and Sahil Bharadwaj. The fielding was awesome and excellent batting (for RBC) by Khurram (Tabassum) with the towering sixes.”
Valley Park bowled out RBC for 151 to win by 8 runs, despite Man-of-the-match Khurram Tabassum’s knock of 53 runs, to go with his two wickets. Sunil Joshi took three wickets, Danish three wickets and Sahil Bharadwaj two wickets.
Thanks are also due to the umpires, scorer Taimoor Tarique Mirza, the special guests, the spectators and the organizers. Hopefully similar projects to develop grounds and beautiful environments similar to this Valley Park initiative can follow, not only in Toronto and Ontario, but across Canada.
Sunil Joshi has returned to Canada this year to help RBC with some cricket promotional activities. He is due to play for the Asian XI against the International XI at the Rogers Centre on Saturday (May 12) in the Cricket All Star T20 2012 Toronto match.
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