{"id":4729,"date":"2013-07-21T08:29:07","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T11:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/?p=4729"},"modified":"2013-07-21T08:29:07","modified_gmt":"2013-07-21T11:59:07","slug":"from-afghanistan-to-ottawa-cricket%e2%80%99s-their-game-ottawa-citizen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/?p=4729","title":{"rendered":"From Afghanistan to Ottawa, cricket\u2019s their game (Ottawa Citizen)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Players on Capital United Cricket Club learned game on street, in refugee camps &#8211; Gord Holder reports<br \/>\nNawadi and nearly 20 other Capital United Cricket Club teammates are conducting a regular Tuesday practice on a grass field on Lynda Lane, near The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s General campus. The grass is longer than it should be for proper cricket grounds, nor is there a proper pavilion, but at least it\u2019s not conflict-ravaged Afghanistan or a refugee camp somewhere else. \u201cWhen we came to Canada, the league we\u2019re playing in right now, we\u2019re playing with an official cricket ball, which is a hard ball. But in Pakistan, because we didn\u2019t have the money for the equipment and our families couldn\u2019t afford it at that time, we played with a tennis ball,\u201d says Mustafa Popalzai, Murtaza\u2019s 26-year-old brother. \u201cWe used to cut cardboard to use for our (leg) paddings, and I never actually touched a regular hard ball until I came to Canada. \u2026 We used to break the chairs in our school and take the handles and make bats out of them.\u201d<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ottawacitizen.com\/sports\/From+Afghanistan+Ottawa+cricket+their+game\/8686794\/story.html\">Full story<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Players on Capital United Cricket Club learned game on street, in refugee camps &#8211; Gord Holder reports Nawadi and nearly 20 other Capital United Cricket Club teammates are conducting a regular Tuesday practice on a grass field on Lynda Lane, near The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s General campus. The grass is longer than it should be for [&hellip;]<\/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\/4729"}],"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=4729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4730,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4729\/revisions\/4730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}