The Toronto Schools Boys Varsity Schools City playoffs are scheduled to take place this coming Thursday (June 6) at Sunnybrook Park, Toronto. This year the City Playoffs will only include four teams – the finalists from the Toronto East and West regions. The two City semi-finals involve Lester B. Pearson (East) playing George Harvey (West) on the East pitch, and North Albion (West) playing Woburn on the West pitch. These semi-finals are scheduled to begin at 9am. The winning semi-finalists will then meet in the City Grand Final on the East pitch at 12.30pm.

Hopefully the spectator from Saturday’s CIMA Mayor’s School Cricket championships who might be venturing to Eglinton Flats for these City Finals, based on discussions last Saturday afternoon, will notice that these matches are at Sunnybrook Park,

The journeys in the CIMA Mayor’s tournament, and the spirit of friendship between the players and officials from the various cities in the GTA did make one wonder about public transportation in the Greater Toronto Area. A topic featured in today’s Toronto edition of “Metro”. If the once planned Eglinton subway line had ever been completed in the mid-1990’s, it might have been useful to cricket followers and players (and to some other amateur sportspersons). As a grander version, or vision, it could have served Sunnybrook Park in Toronto’s east, Eglinton Flats in Toronto’s west, and, if extended into Mississauga, might also have serve the cricket ground at Iceland, passing and serving Etobicoke’s Centennial Park cricket grounds on the Etobicoke (Toronto)/Mississauga border as well.

Of course, it is quite a distance from the corner of Eglinton Ave East and Leslie Street to the sporting fields of Sunnybrook Park, particularly the cricket grounds. Perhaps a couple of hundred dollars might be found to provide some kind of lift up and down the cliff face at Sunnybrook Park to replace the 110 or so steps that need to be climbed from the lower level. But the climbing exercise might prove useful in preparing for some joint cricketing and climbing excursion to Nepal and the Himalayas.

These City Grand Finals come just one week after the sixtieth anniversary of the first successful climb to the top of Mount Everest. Some of our young cricketers might prefer to see some infrastructure funds being provided to make some of the playing areas for cricket a bit more level than on some cliff’s lift or automated people mover in Sunnybrook Park. Something that might also help young soccer, rugby and American football players in parks where those sports include a cricket pitch between two soccer or rugby pitches. I still recall a comment that “you wouldn’t play soccer on a ground like this in England, would you?” during a Saturday exploratory tour of various grounds and leagues in the Mississauga/Brampton areas during the 2009 sporting summer. A venture worthy of being revisited due to some improved bus services, particularly on Saturdays. Toss in some obscure or pompous title and one might have the basis for some grand academic comparative thesis that could gather dust in some university library.

Eddie Norfolk