By BOB BRUTON, BARRIE EXAMINER
\nDitching Barrie’s cricket pitch won’t stop this weekend’s matches at Maitland Park. Two scheduled Saturday games will be played despite vandals ripping the plastic pitch from the east-end park and throwing it in a corner ditch.
\n“It’s discouraging to the people who have been trying to play the sport, who are doing the extra work,” said Arjun Batra, Barrie Cricket League president. “That’s the sad part.
\nBatra said the pitch was vandalized twice, on July 14 and 18. The incidents have been reported to Barrie city police. Const. Toni Dufour said she’s sent an internal message to city police, asking officers to do additional patrols in the area, if possible. “It will make the patrol officers aware that this has happened more than once and to go by the area more frequently, especially in the night hours,” she said. Dufour says she will also notify the Friday evening duty officer, to help ensure nothing more happens to the cricket pitch the night before Saturday’s matches. City council gave permission in June for Barrie Cricket League to play its games at Maitland Park, located on the west side of Johnson Street, north of Grove Street and just more than 5.5 acres in size. A ball field, with a backstop and fences, took up most of its space before cricket became the focus. Batra said the cricket pitch is worth $6,000 and was donated by former Cricket Canada CEO Atul Ahuja.
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\nIt is back in place after the vandalism and can still be used.<\/p>\n
Batra said he believes it would take four or five people to lift the pitch, because it’s very heavy, and it would need to be put into a pickup truck or some other vehicle, then put into the ditch.<\/p>\n
“It’s a plastic pitch, so to cut it is really hard,” he said. “But there are sockets (in the pitch) that come out and it makes for an uneven bounce.”<\/p>\n
Batra said Ward 1 Coun. Bonnie Ainsworth, Mayor Jeff Lehman and Barrie MP Patrick Brown have all be alerted about the vandalism.<\/p>\n
“The excitement of the recently launched BCL has been deeply dampened by this unfortunate incident,” Batra said.<\/p>\n
Besides more police patrols in the area, Dufour said other possible methods to deter vandals include better lighting, trimming trees to make the park more visible for neighbours, motion detectors and even security cameras.<\/p>\n
As Maitland is a public park, however, any such measures would require approval from city parks staff or even city council, especially if the expense is significant.<\/p>\n
The Barrie Cricket League has six teams of 11 players. Most games are played on weekends.<\/p>\n
Batra collected 500 signatures on a petition this past spring asking for a cricket field, including one from Brown.<\/p>\n
Cricket has been played at Georgian College for a number of years, but only students have been welcome to join.<\/p>\n
Parking lots and open fields, including Sunnidale Park, near the Arboretum, have sufficed for the 160 members of the Barrie Cricket Club.<\/p>\n
Georgian College has been one of the driving forces behind the growing cricket community in Barrie. International students who arrive from countries where the sport is regularly played have been the reason for Georgian’s exceptional talent.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Georgian won the Humber College Cricket Cup 2011 and became finalists in Sheridan College’s cricket extramural tournament.<\/p>\n
Eastview Secondary School also picked up cricket and hosted an intramural tournament with more than 80 students.<\/p>\n
Cricket is reportedly the second most popular sport in the world, next to soccer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By BOB BRUTON, BARRIE EXAMINER Ditching Barrie’s cricket pitch won’t stop this weekend’s matches at Maitland Park. Two scheduled Saturday games will be played despite vandals ripping the plastic pitch from the east-end park and throwing it in a corner ditch. “It’s discouraging to the people who have been trying to play the sport, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702"}],"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=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1703,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions\/1703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}