An opinion piece from Srinath Wijeyeratne; we would be happy to publish other articles on the future of cricket in Canada

There is a well known saying, “When a door closes, another opens”. Canadian cricket has reached this juncture and it is time, we as the cricket loving community of Canada, look to the avenues to go forward after entering the new door that was opened. It’s not currently an opening that leads upwards. But, it is not too late..

Canada, has already participated in three ICC World-Cups, but not fared that well to come up to the ‘top’ recognition in the world. If you analyze the results, it is the ‘Standard’ of cricket that prevails in Canada due to various factors that could be taken in to consideration, if you are to bring the ‘bar’ up to a certain level that we could sustain ourselves playing with the ‘Associates’ first and then when we were qualified to the top level to play in WC, to face the ‘Big-Guns’ in world cricket. You can re-call that former skipper John Davison, recorded the fastest century in 2003 World Cup against West Indies. We lack these types of performers in our camps now. The reason being, Davison had the opportunity of playing cricket in Australia when the Canadian weather does not permit the rest of the cricketers in Canada to play the game during winter. They are confined to indoors facilities made out of concrete with no real feeling of cricket and the most valuable “match-practice” not being there.
Now how do we get about tackling this problem? Financial constrains will be the vital answer. The poor situation of the funds that are available, sponsors or donors are lacking in this part of the world. If the monies can be found, the players are selected as per their capabilities, experiences, merit, then the administrators can think of sending the players concern to countries like West-Indies, Sri-Lanka, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh where cricket is played 365 days of the year, to be in touch and play good cricket when it comes to International games. Then we can expect a few more ‘JD’s’ to come in to the scene. We do have a few players namely Nitish Kumar, Nikhil Dutta, S.Dindsa, Farhan Malik who are given opportunities in WI and specially Nitish having blessed with an opportunity to be in England on a scholarship arranged by his club Toronto C.C. This is what we need to the rest of the pool of Canadian players who are selected and opportunities must be found, probably giving them a monthly remuneration, to support their living and finding avenues to send them out of Canada during winter for training and play matches.

Administrators of cricket in Canada (CC & T&D and other Organizations) must get together and prepare a solid “Proposal” and make it available to the State (Government) and seek ‘redress’ by way of assistance in developing Infrastructure such as typical cricket grounds and turf pitches with decent changing rooms/dressing rooms, training facilities, tournament structure with 50-over and T-20 games, Coaching and Motivation sessions etc. Example: The International venue we have in ‘King-City’ has not been given any facelift since 2008 (year that writer arrived in Canada) must be up-graded to a somewhat levels, a master plan to be fixed by expert volunteers and ‘finances’ to be found to start on renovations, at least to the 1-A ground, which is reserved to play games against visiting teams.
Let us all get together as one Cricket Playing family and get our priorities in order, raise funds, get sponsors and donors, specially the government grants, the help of city authorities that can accommodate typical cricket playing facilities. Canada has plenty of land available and hope and prays that the state can provide a few acres of land for this purpose.
Hope this can be achieved with the help of top level state personnel, who could give a lending hand, at least for the sake of cricket loving citizens of Canada that makes out of the Multi-cultural peoples who have migrated to Canada, including some best talent that has immense experience in the game played over the years in their countries, before migrating to Canada.
MAY GOD BLESS CRICKET IN CANADA?

SRINATH WIJEYERATNE

(The writer is from Sri-Lanka, having migrated to Canada in 2008, with plenty of experience in Administration & organizing of the game and holding a Managerial position in one of the top level cricket clubs in Colombo and part time worker of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) – Liaisons Officer for visiting Inter-national teams.)