By NOUMAN KHALIL
\nCricket Canada has decided to host the National Cricket Championships in Toronto from July 26-30.
\nThe tournament, which Cricket Canada is claiming to be the first in five years, has been named after Ed Bracht, a Maple Leaf Cricket Club trusty.
\n“As an organization it is our duty to deliver a viable national championships for our players and supporters,” says Ranjit Saini, president of Cricket Canada.
\n“It has been five long years since we all got together in Vancouver for a 50-over competition and we will be looking for the same high quality tournament,” Saini added.
\n
\nThis year only five teams – British Columbia, Alberta, Prairies, Ontario and Eastern Canada – will be vying for the Ed Bracht trophy.<\/p>\n
For Prairie provinces, Saskatchewan has been asked to team up with Manitoba whereas Nova Scotia and Quebec will field a combined Eastern Canadian team. British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario will field one team each.<\/p>\n
In the Scotiabank National T20 Championship held in 2008, eight individual teams represented British Columbia, Alberta, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan provinces. Ontario was the only province that fielded two separate teams.<\/p>\n
Ontario B walked away as champion defeating Quebec at the Maple Leaf Cricket Club in the final.<\/p>\n
Abdul Jabbar (159) of Quebec was the top run scorer while Eion Katchay (8) of Ontario B captured the highest number of wickets. It was also the first time in Canada that Rogers Television as well as cbc.ca covered all the matches.<\/p>\n
Nationwide tournaments in any country are always the main source of back-up for the national team and serve as a healthy talent hunt program, and always attract major sponsors.<\/p>\n
Last year Scotiabank, the then sole corporate sponsor for cricket in Canada, was disappointed and eventually departed mainly because there had been no national cricket in Canada.<\/p>\n
Cricket critic and president of Cricket Champions League, Atul Ahuja, said: “An annual national championship is key to ensuring nationwide visibility of our players across Canada and all member provinces have to be given fair share of representation. Combined teams do not work unless a team plays and practises together, just putting 11 players for the sake of a tournament is a farce.<\/p>\n
“The national championship needs to be monetized. To hold it during weekdays will likely bring little to no spectators and therefore no major sponsors. Cricket in Canada cannot grow if it is not monetized through sponsorship.”<\/p>\n
He also termed the naming of the trophy after Ed Bracht a political move.<\/p>\n
“Ed Bracht has been around Canadian cricket purely as an administrator for many years. However, to name the national championship after him is a political move that I believe stems from the current Maple Leaf Cricket Club crisis where he (Bracht) is a trustee.<\/p>\n
“It does no justice to some of the great players that have played for Canada over the years and sacrificed their livelihood to put Canada on the cricket map. I am astonished that the suggestion to name a trophy after one of our many great players did not come from Ed himself.”<\/p>\n
The tournament will be played Monday, July 26 to Friday, July 30 in Toronto. The complete match schedule is to be announced soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By NOUMAN KHALIL Cricket Canada has decided to host the National Cricket Championships in Toronto from July 26-30. The tournament, which Cricket Canada is claiming to be the first in five years, has been named after Ed Bracht, a Maple Leaf Cricket Club trusty. “As an organization it is our duty to deliver a viable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301"}],"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=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions\/302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}