City councillors Adam Vaughan and Doug Ford put their political differences aside to host a city hall event Friday for the 12 youth chosen to represent Toronto in the fourth annual Cricket Across the Pond program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a program about building leadership in our communities and using cricket as a vehicle to do just that,\u201d said Mr. Vaughan, calling cricket one of the great character-building sports.<\/p>\n
The team of 12 known as the CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) Mayor\u2019s Team represent a cross-section of young ambassadors from Toronto\u2019s diverse neighbourhoods. They\u2019ll spend eight days in England developing their skills.<\/p>\n
Cricket is the fastest growing game in Toronto and although the Mayor is more of a football guy he, Mr. Vaughan and Doug Ford will be participating in the Mayor\u2019s Cup tournament Saturday along with the young men.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe funniest thing is going to be watching you and Rob chase each other around with a bat,\u201d said Mr. Ford with a grin for his fellow councillor, a known adversary of the mayor.
\n
\nEach young player was selected after a city-wide tournament and interview process that involved hundreds of eager hopefuls.<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s captain was announced at the event: Michael Walton, from Emery Collegiate Institute. He said he was surprised to even make the team. \u201cI was quite shocked to hear because this would be my second time going so I didn\u2019t expect a call,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Walton grew up watching his dad, who is from the Caribbean, play cricket. He\u2019s also a member of the Canadian under 19 cricket team and plans to continue playing while he attends York University next year to study kinesiology.<\/p>\n
Adil Askary, vice principal at Weston Collegiate Institute, is the team\u2019s coach. \u201cThis is probably the youngest team we\u2019ve taken,\u201d he said. but he\u2019s confident they\u2019ll do well.<\/p>\n
The program is a collaborative project with Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation and CIMA Canada.<\/p>\n
The team consists of:<\/p>\n
In Ho (Gus) Cha, 17, Upper Canada College<\/p>\n
Akeel Cheema, 18, Kipling Collegiate Institute<\/p>\n
Manav Parikh, 17, Sir Wilfred Laurier Collegiate Institue<\/p>\n
Dipenkumar Patel, 21, Ryerson University<\/p>\n
Malav Patel, 17, North Albion Collegiate Institute<\/p>\n
Parth Patel, 18, Woburn Collegiate Institute<\/p>\n
Aashin Patwari, 17, Woburn Collegiate Institute<\/p>\n
Neil Ramkissoon, 17, West Hill Collegiate Institute<\/p>\n
Yug Rao, 17, Woburn Collegiate Institute<\/p>\n
Akshay Shah, 16, George Harvey Collegiate Institue<\/p>\n
Talha Shaikh, 17, George Harvey Collegiate Institute<\/p>\n
Michael Walton, 18, Emery Collegiate Institute (C)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
City councillors Adam Vaughan and Doug Ford put their political differences aside to host a city hall event Friday for the 12 youth chosen to represent Toronto in the fourth annual Cricket Across the Pond program. \u201cThis is a program about building leadership in our communities and using cricket as a vehicle to do just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639"}],"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=1639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1640,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions\/1640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}