Desmond Haynes
Meadowvale Mavericks with Desmond Haynes
Meadowvale Mavericks 143/3 (30 overs) beat Clarkson Cavaliers 141/5 (30 overs)
The Desmond Haynes U19 Cup Final provided some dramatic twists and turns as Clarkson Cavaliers chased Meadowvale Mavericks 143/3 from 30 overs. The last ball of the Cavaliers 30 overs saw Kavian Naress run out for 49 and left Cavaliers on 141/5 and crowned Meadowvale Mavericks as champions by just 2 runs.
The start of play was delayed until 1pm on Friday to allow the crease areas on a number of the grass wickets at the Iceland cricket oval to dray after heavy rains on Thursday. The late start resulted in the final being reduced to 30 overs per side, but the game provided some good cricket, some mistakes and some tense closing overs.
Nikhil Sharma top-scored for Meadowvale Mavericks with 54 from 63 balls. He retired hurt late in the Mavericks innings. Nikhil Sharma initially remained on the field after turning a ball to the legside and scoring a single but then left the field shortly afterwards. It may have made sense for a different batsman to be at the crease for the last over from a short term perspective. Nikhil Sharma was certainly looking happy when presented with the Best Batsman award by Desmond Haynes in the post-game presentations.
Clarkson Cavaliers’ opening bat Kevin Singh struck 61 from 67 balls before being caught off the bowling of Shivam Joshi. The second wicket stand of 87 between Kevin Singh and Kavian Naress steered the Cavaliers towards the Mavericks total. The pair came together in the 6th over and their stand ended in the 25th over.
Some more reports, stories and news about the 2016 Desmond Haynes Cup, other components in the 2015 Mississauga Ramblers Junior Cricket Festival and some expectations of more and better for the future will emerge in due course. Some video footage of the final and Desmond Haynes talk during the closing ceremonies will emerge in the next day or two, as should a list and some photos of the individual award winners. But the most important short-term priority from a cricketing perspective is to ensure a copy of video from the final is made available to Mr. Desmond Haynes. He has plans to take a look and see how he can help the development path of Canadian junior cricketers. His plans and some ideas were outlined in his talk at the start of the closing ceremony and presentations.
Perhaps some of the Mississauga Ramblers infrastructure hopes for the Iceland Cricket Oval might be revised and presented afresh to officials and the local council. It would certainly be useful if there were some washrooms near the cricket ground, which might also serve the nearby soccer fields and even those walking their dog or dogs. But a past initiative was rejected and meant an annual schools cricket outdoor tournament for female cricketers came to an end due to lack of such facilities.
Meanwhile the possibility exists that whatever video and still photos I have taken at the 2015 and 2016 Desmond Haynes Cup events might be assigned to some kind of trust fund or foundation for the support of junior cricket. Following the pattern of what Desmond Haynes said, any fund would be geared towards not just the Mississauga Ramblers but to the broader development of junior cricket. A concept, an idea but several steps would be needed to turn this into a longer-term reality. In the short-term I am not likely to be making any public disclosure other than saying I did speak to someone yesterday, who (like me) seems to know some useful people for making things happen.
I did notice on Friday morning that the structure for this year’s Toronto and District Cricket Association’s junior playoffs had been posted on the league’s facebook page. Some insiders will be aware of the current standings in the TDCA junior leagues, but others in the broader cricket community may not have much of a clue about the current standings and remaining junior league games of the TDCA. However, the tradition of holding these TDCA junior playoffs during the Labour Day weekend continues with one final due on the Sunday and three finals on the Labour Day Holiday Monday.
A special event on the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend involves the 2016 Mayors Cricket Across the Pond squad seemingly playing against teams from tour sponsors RBC and Toronto Police Board (no mention of a Tom’s Place team on the notice that has been posted on “Canada Cricket Online”). The TDCA Super 6 T20 regular season is also due to be completed during the Labour Day weekend. Perhaps there is more cricket in the Greater Toronto Area next weekend – there has to be as several other leagues exist – but there is not much time to make any other “special” events or games known.
So, well done to the players and their parents, who supported the playing side of the 2016 Desmond Haynes U19 Cup, the committee and volunteers from Mississauga Ramblers who hosted and funded the tournament. Special thanks to Mr. Fayaz Jamkhandi and to Mr. Desmond Haynes, who took time to talk to many of the young players.
Eddie Norfolk
Footnote: Mention was made during one of the closing speeches on Friday (August 26, 2016) about potentially adding an international element to the Desmond Haynes U19 Cup. There were international elements in the U13 and U15 tournaments in the 2016 Mississauga International Cricket Festival, that operated under the Ontario Cricket Development banner in conjunction with the Ontario Cricket Academy. I think the Desmond Haynes perspective would be to integrate some of these events and use more than one ground – Mississauga now has three grounds with natural grass wickets.
But there are related needs to ensure resources are available to look after the grounds, to act as scorers and scoreboard operators and to ensure advance publicity is distributed so the existence of such cricket tournaments and/or special matches is known in the broader community. This begins to enter a phase where “meet and greet” people are needed to talk to those who attend festival games but have no cricket backgrounds or those who have not seen cricket outdoors for a long time.
The need to distribute scores on a daily basis for inclusion in newspapers, radio, TV and internet-based media would exist in this cricketing “brave new world”. Although the current cricketing new world in North America (Canada and the USA) has some enthusiasts and experts who seem to be closer to the stone age than the 20th or 21st centuries in my opinion.
Some of the stone age thinkers may be happy to learn I have filled a 1Tb disk drive in a laptop in what must be less than two months with video and still photos of, mostly, a few cricket events. So I will not be editing or posting a host of video segments today about such cricket events. Desmond Haynes said on Friday that he was “not a politician” and one of our current elected cricket officers once told me I was not a politician. Interesting, as at the University of Reading one had to undertake courses in three distinct subjects during the first year. My degree is a joint degree in Economics and Geography. My third subject during the first year was “political science”; not so much the spear throwing of words and sometimes objects in some “modern” electoral political situations but it involved a more considered review of the structure and workings of the political and governance structures of the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), the United States of America and “Russia”/the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”. But it can be good not to be regarded as “a politician”.
Would it be “political” to ask what has happened to the publication of the various reports produced by the provincial cricketing bodies that are affiliated with Cricket Canada? Provincial Reports that were supposed to be produced in time for the last Cricket Canada Annual General Meeting (AGM), but which were due to be published by Cricket Canada following this year’s AGM in Vancouver.
Perhaps some individual provinces might consider publishing their current annual report(s) given this seeming deficiency by cricket’s national governing body in Canada?
Sustainable growth should be a key objective, indeed this objective needs to broaden, in my opinion, to sustainable growth on the field for junior cricket, sustainable growth of off-the-field support for junior cricket development and for sustainable growth in the area of securing meaningful sponsorships and ensuring appropriate thanks and recognition are provided for cricket’s sponsors.