Ian Harrison
\nImagine a raw but talented 16-year-old getting plucked out of high school and called into action for Canada\u2019s national baseball team, sent up to the plate to fend for his life against the likes of Roy Halladay, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Ubaldo Jiminez, and you have some idea of what\u2019s happening to Nitish Kumar right now. Only Kumar isn\u2019t swinging for the fences on a baseball diamond, he\u2019s staring down the world\u2019s best bowlers as Canada\u2019s leadoff batter at the Cricket World Cup. All this from a kid so callow and innocent he still lists his interests as \u201cstaying up late and watching movies,\u201d and has dedicated his play to his widowed mom. A grade 11 student at Scarborough, Ontario\u2019s Woburn Collegiate, Kumar became the youngest player in tournament history in Monday\u2019s loss to Zimbabwe, still about three months shy of his 17th birthday. If this is the first you\u2019re hearing about it, don\u2019t feel left out. Kumar\u2019s milestone didn\u2019t open too many eyes in this country, not just because it happened half a world away in India and in the middle of the night back in Canada.<\/p>\n
\nCricket might not have much profile here, but it\u2019s a national obsession throughout the three South Asian nations that are hosting this tournament. And not surprisingly, there\u2019s significant interest in the fortunes of this promising and personable Indo-Canadian teenager. His story isn\u2019t quite the stuff of a Bollywood drama, but it\u2019s certainly got some of the elements.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for Canada and Kumar, Monday\u2019s debut wasn\u2019t so memorable, with the teen scoring just a single run on the 10 balls he faced before being caught out. Worse still, that was actually better than his 40-year-old batting partner John Davison. The oldest player in the tournament and Canada\u2019s most experienced veteran (he was once a teammate of Kumar\u2019s late father), Davison didn\u2019t even register a single run as Canada collapsed to a second straight loss.<\/p>\n
With matches against Pakistan, New Zealand and defending-champions Australia on Canada\u2019s schedule, there\u2019s not much cause for optimism. This may be Canada\u2019s third consecutive World Cup appearance, but it also looks likely to be the third straight time the team will head home without reaching the second round.<\/p>\n
The short-term future, at least as far as World Cup berths go, doesn\u2019t look too rosy either. Cricket\u2019s tall foreheads have signaled that space for so-called \u201cassociate countries\u201d like Canada will be severely limited at the next tournament four years hence, with the field trimmed from 14 to 10 teams. Any chance of a spot going to a squad outside the International Cricket Council\u2019s 10 full member nations is extremely slim. Keep the minnows home and maximize revenue for the big boys seems to be the attitude here. Forget trying to grow the game anywhere else.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s too bad, because Kumar, who\u2019s also a capable bowler, might one day blossom into the type of player who could make headlines on home soil, leading his country to upset wins over the sport\u2019s traditional powers. Far-fetched? Maybe, but not impossible, a fact that was proven this week when 26-year-old Irishman Kevin O\u2019Brien beat up England\u2019s bowlers for the fastest 100-runs in World Cup history, an eye-popping explosion that looked more like a home run derby than a first-class cricket match. Looking down and out in the early going, Ireland rallied behind O\u2019Brien\u2019s booming bat to shock England and earn a famous victory, the first by an associate nation at this tournament.<\/p>\n
Could that be Canada one day, led by Kumar or one of the five other players on the current roster under the age of 23? Look at it this way. When pro basketball players entered the Olympics for the first time in 1992, no one gave the rest of the world a chance against the United States and their mighty Dream Team. Fast forward 10 or 12 years and it\u2019s a different story, with the Americans dethroned from their World Championship and Olympic crowns, and nations like Spain and Argentina ranked among the world\u2019s elite. <\/p>\n
We may be minnows, but don\u2019t cheat us from seeing young Canadian talent rubbing shoulders with the big boys. Open the game up and let it grow, and maybe by the time Kumar is 30, cricket\u2019s landscape will look a whole lot different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ian Harrison Imagine a raw but talented 16-year-old getting plucked out of high school and called into action for Canada\u2019s national baseball team, sent up to the plate to fend for his life against the likes of Roy Halladay, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Ubaldo Jiminez, and you have some idea of what\u2019s happening to Nitish Kumar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1364,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions\/1364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}