by Tom Kennedy
\nIf you drive past Waterworks Park on any given Sunday in the summer months, don\u2019t be surprised if you witness something a little unfamiliar. Don\u2019t worry, it isn\u2019t some new extreme version of baseball. It\u2019s cricket, a sport played in more than 100 countries worldwide. The first game of cricket played in Brantford took place in 1834, but the Brantford Cricket Club has slipped under the radar despite a rich history of competition.
\n\u201cIt is a sport that is being passed down to the next generations,\u201d Brantford Cricket Club vice president Mujtaba Malik said. \u201cCricket is a very friendly game. You have no violence in cricket. It\u2019s basically a gentleman\u2019s game.\u201d
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\nThe \u201cgentleman\u2019s game\u201d was invented in England in the 16th century and has a simple enough concept: two teams play on a round field with a hardened rectangular surface in the middle called a pitch.<\/p>\n
The teams, consisting of 11 players each, take turns at batting and bowling on the pitch. You have a certain amount of outs and bowls (pitches) in which to score runs. The objective is to score more runs than the opposition.<\/p>\n
Runs are scored by hitting the ball and then running the length of the pitch.<\/p>\n
It is believed cricket was introduced to Canadians by English soldiers. In Brantford, the club has a history of welcoming new immigrants with a familiar sport in an unfamiliar land.<\/p>\n
Murtaza Malik, captain of the Brantford Cricket Club, said about 95 per cent of the current team immigrated directly from the West Indies or South Asia. He, on the other hand, was born and raised in Brantford and was introduced to the sport at a young age by his father, Mujtaba, who moved to Canada from Pakistan in 1973.<\/p>\n
Mujtaba moved to Brantford with Massey Ferguson in 1975 and joined the cricket club shortly afterward. For him, it was natural to seek out a place to play the sport that thrived in his native land. It was a way to more easily transition into a new life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I moved to Brantford, I joined the BCC and I was very comfortable there,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the beginning, like any other immigrant, you have to worry about employment. But a couple of years later I started playing cricket because it was my passion since childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mujtaba now lives in Oakville, but is still part of the Brantford club and has already introduced the sport to his five and seven-year-old grandchildren.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt brings up the younger generation to be more friendly and open-minded.\u201d<\/p>\n
His son, Murtaza, said the sport was built in Canada on the backs of immigrants and it is now up to their first-generation Canadian children to take cricket to the next level and make it a truly Canadian sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a gradual transition,\u201d Murtaza said. \u201cMy father and his brothers immigrated here and they played cricket and they handed it on to us and now we play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cricket continues to grow in Canada, with the national team securing a spot in the 2011 World Cup, to be played in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hard work has been done by the immigrants who came here,\u201d Murtaza said. \u201cThey\u2019ve given us a platform to build from. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a focus internally where we want to produce players who were born here or grew up here, to develop them to play at the elite level. That\u2019s what we\u2019re hoping to do with the next generation of cricketers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Tom Kennedy If you drive past Waterworks Park on any given Sunday in the summer months, don\u2019t be surprised if you witness something a little unfamiliar. Don\u2019t worry, it isn\u2019t some new extreme version of baseball. It\u2019s cricket, a sport played in more than 100 countries worldwide. The first game of cricket played in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284"}],"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=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}