Shivani Naik
\nThey are not nostalgic about mustard fields, nor pumped up about bhangra. The eight Indian-origin players of Canada\u2019s World Cup squad talk about the sport in their country, playing in India and being Canadians first
\nThey do go crazy over cricket and crave for curry at times, but the eight Indian-origin players in the Canadian cricket team certainly aren\u2019t confused desis. The team\u2019s batting prodigy, Nitish Kumar, has not learnt to mouth the \u201cI love ghar ka khaana\u201d clich\u00e9. Nor is the 16-year-old boy with spiked hair, born to Punjabi parents in Canada, pining to visit the mustard fields of his native state, like the movies would have you believe. \u201cActually, I like butter chicken, but I love having it outside when eating at restaurants, like most of us Canadians do,\u201d he says, staking no claim to the supposed land of birth of the dish.
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\nKumar might be rated highly by those who\u2019ve seen him play over long periods, but his first memory of cricket is far from a compelling drama of sincerity. \u201cWell, I remember my first practice session in cricket very well. I missed it!\u201d he says of the day his father \u2014 whom he later lost to an accident \u2014 had readied a junior kit-bag for him, and placed an alarm clock by his bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was 4 or 5 years old, and I really didn\u2019t want to go train for cricket, so I just overslept,\u201d he chuckles.<\/p>\n
He cuts the Punjabi frills further when he says he detests conversing in his native tongue with Indian-origin players in a team that boasts of seven ethnicities \u2014 Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Canadian, West Indian, Australian and Ugandan. \u201cI\u2019m a Canadian, and it\u2019s good when the whole team can speak in English,\u201d says the Ontario-born, whose batting might need some temperance, but whose mature handling of the multicultural dynamic of his team is beyond his years.<\/p>\n
Another unconfused soul in this team is 26-year-old Jimmy Hansra, born in Ludhiana, but living in Vancouver. He roars in amusement at the hint that \u201cJimmy\u201d might have been an Anglicised name swiftly adopted when he left India as a 14-year-old and became a Canadian citizen. \u201cNo, no, no \u2014 I was named Jimmy by my grandmother when I was two months old. But then, I needed a formal name in school, so they called me Amabhir,\u201d says the right-hand bat and handy off-break bowler.<\/p>\n
Hansra fulfilled the mother of all Indian parents\u2019 dreams. \u201c(I\u2019m an) engineer plus cricketer,\u201d he guffaws. The athletic cricketer played for his Canadian school and college cricket teams even as he pursued instructional engineering. Hansra\u2019s tryst with cricket began in a manner similar to most other Indian-Canadian players. \u201cI was going to the park to play soccer in Vancouver when I saw a group of boys \u2014 of mixed ethnicities playing something that looked familiar \u2014 cricket. I\u2019d carried a cricket kit from India which had been lying in the store room. I ran home, dusted off my bat and gloves and started,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
When he arrived in India for the World Cup, Hansra\u2019s extended family of 20-odd cousins trooped in to cheer for their relative. The bigger surprise though was how some of his old school friends from Ludhiana had tracked him down on Facebook after seeing the team list, and reached Bangalore to watch their schoolmate play. \u201cI\u2019ve been to north India before, but it\u2019s good to visit with my team,\u201d he says, never once forgetting what he owes to his adopted country, even if his Indian acquaintances shower all the affection on him owing to his status as a Cupper. \u201cI rose through the ranks. Cricket Canada maintains elaborate records of stats and scores of domestic leagues, which are at the selectors\u2019 disposal. Anyone from any corner of Canada can get into the team, if he performs well,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
For a country whose top sports are baseball and ice hockey, and whose weather \u2014 just a three-month summer \u2014 means a year-round season is near impossible, Canada is trying hard to pitch the game up, with Indians at the forefront. \u201cIn the \u201960s and \u201970s, Canadian cricket was dominated by West Indians and Europeans. Now the majority is Asians,\u201d says Canadian media manager Mike Henry in a drawling Caribbean tone.<\/p>\n
This happened gradually over the last decade \u2014 also a period when Toronto\u2019s suburb Springdale became \u2018Singh\u2019dale, and Malton and Rexdale started teeming with Indians. India\u2019s cultural centre, the Albion Mall, shimmered with saris, jewellery and \u201cpots-n-pans\u201d stores, even as the economically well-off community was packing off its kids to dentistry and engineering colleges. Now, cricket, it seems, is a viable career option too, with the advent of T20, Canada\u2019s qualification for 50-over World Cups, and selection of Indian Canadian Ashish Bagai \u2014 whose mother and brother are doctors, and whose father is an investment banker \u2014 as captain.<\/p>\n
Besides the infusion of Indian pros in the administration, an organised set-up has helped Canadian cricket in recent years. There\u2019s the Toronto Cricket Staking and Curling Club which most ethnic Indians join after showing early promise. Watching and learning is difficult with cricket\u2019s limited television presence, though three 24×7 cricket channels are beaming the World Cup this year. Artificial turfs \u2014 Canada has 10 of those \u2014 can only help to a certain extent.<\/p>\n
Most Indian-origin players in the national team have come through the system in place. Perhaps the sole exception is Balaji Rao whose unfinished business with cricket in India had left him disenchanted eight years ago. The portly leg-break bowler was the joint highest wicket-taker with Venkatapathy Raju 10 years ago, but was dropped from the Tamil Nadu Ranji side \u2014 in typical Indian fashion, without being given any reasons.<\/p>\n
After his mother was diagnosed with cancer, he had to jump continents to look after her, and it took him long to start thinking again of cricket. \u201cIt was very tough. The first three years I didn\u2019t know anyone there, and I started at the Centurions club through an internet contact, where I finished as the top wicket-taker for three years. I still had to wait for the four-year period that\u2019s mandatory before you become eligible to play for Canada, and missed the last World Cup,\u201d he says. Coach Pubudu Dassanayake says he was stunned that Rao had persisted and eventually played the World Cup. \u201cHe had a point to prove,\u201d he says, adding that the motivation lent an aggressive edge to his bowling. Things like going from 37 degrees Celsius to -15 degrees and keeping the drive to play alive tend to be appreciated by his immediate family more than those who scoff at his return to cricket in a team of minnows.<\/p>\n
Rao, the seasoned pro, believes that the decision of having only 10 teams at the next World Cup and the focus on T20 could endanger his craft of spin bowling. \u201cT20\u2019s not going to teach spinners anything of note. I fear for the future of those growing up in Canada, especially the spinners,\u201d says Rao, who has a day job as an automobile claims insurance professional.<\/p>\n
The Gujarati-origin pair of left-arm spinners Parth Desai and Hiral Patel (both U-19 World Cuppers for Canada) can gleefully master their skill and enjoy cricket for the sake of it. While Patel works for a fast-food chain, Desai has taken a semester break from college for the Cup. Cricket is central to their lives in this World Cup period, but both would be keen to play more than just the quadrennial.<\/p>\n
Thanks to all his Indian-origin players \u2014 Canada\u2019s media man has had to spend pre-match days trying to procure as many tickets as possible \u2014 friends and relatives keep trickling in to watch their \u201cown boys\u201d.<\/p>\n
What the Indian Canadians share in common with the rest of the squad is memories of the Sahara Cup that Canada hosted in the late \u201990s. The Indo-Pak matches influenced an entire generation of Asians to believe that big-time cricket could take off in Canada. It also preceded the bonding that they share in the team now. \u201cIndians and Pakistanis blend well. We mess around with each other, but rag the Australians the most. We always make fun of their \u2018yea, mate.\u2019 But we are Team Canada, and as a team, we\u2019re all in it together \u2014 Aussies, Pakistanis or Indians,\u201d says Hansra. And they\u2019d cherish nothing more than tripping up the Indian team some day.<\/p>\n
They love the bhangra, but the song that gets them all to giggle in a huddle is a typically Canadian ribald song, which they insist is unprintable. They acknowledge the umbilical cord with India, but once broken, they would want nothing more than to chart their own cricket path.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shivani Naik They are not nostalgic about mustard fields, nor pumped up about bhangra. The eight Indian-origin players of Canada\u2019s World Cup squad talk about the sport in their country, playing in India and being Canadians first They do go crazy over cricket and crave for curry at times, but the eight Indian-origin players in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,6,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417"}],"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=1417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1418,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions\/1418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}