The Maple Leaf Cricket Club in King City has been in existence for 60 years.

Recently the cricket club was home to a Canadian championship, which was the inaugural Scotiabank National Twenty20 Cricket Championship on May 17 and 18.

The National Championship is held every two years, but this was the first in the Twenty20 format. Cricket usually has matches that last several days, Twenty20 however are fast-paced and high-scoring
matches with a winner declared in about three hours.

The championship took place on four of the five grounds that the King City club has available at the facility. One of the grounds (1-A) is an internationally certified ground.

“Eight teams playing at the same time is unprecedented for us in Canadian cricket,” said Atul Ahuja, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Cricket Association.

British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario (two teams), Quebec and Nova Scotia were the teams participating in the championship, as in a series of 24 matches Alberta prevailed as
National Champion.

“Everybody that plays cricket here, it’s their soul and they eat and drink cricket,” said Tanzil Rehman of the BC team, who are the former National Champion. “It’s always cricket all year long on our minds, so it can be compared with Canada’s national sport of hockey.”

Ahuja said with Scotiabank and Rogers as sponsors, they have recognized the potential and future cricket has in Canada.

“It’s the fastest growing sport in Canada today, as there are even constructional school programs developing to grow the game at the high school and elementary level,” he said. “We think this is
important for the growth of the game and its’ maturity. We’d like larger numbers to help it nature, but also government support
is important as well.”

The King City facility is good from the perspective of size, said Ahuja.

“Although a lot needs to be done to it,” noted Ahuja. That’s where King Township could play a factor. “This is a good place to hold a national championship again, and we could use the help from the Township’s parks and recreation department for growth and maturing of the facility. It costs a lot to maintain the facility and we
hope we can turn it into a state-of-the-art international facility and expand the ground, which could be good for the community.”

The facility already contains their international ground (1-A), which is bigger, meets certain pitch specifications and the cricket outfield grass is a flat top and very fine.

Canada has won the bid to host the Under-19 World Cup in 2012.

“I met three mayors in BC who are keen in investing in infrastructure to bring the World Cup to them, but we will decide eventually as a governing body of the game as to where we would be able to
play the tournament,” said Ahuja. “Depending on infrastructure maturity we hope to be able to stick with King City.”

The Game of Cricket
For those who don’t know cricket, a bat and ball sport, is a two-team sport, which has one inning that typically last three hours such as with the Twenty20 concept. A cricket match is played on a grass field (roughly oval shaped), in the centre is a flat strip of ground 22 yards long, called a cricket pitch. A wicket (usually made of wood) is placed at each end of the pitch.

The bowler (a player from the fielding team) bowls a hard, fist-sized cricket ball from the vicinity of one wicket towards the other. The ball usually bounces once before reaching the batsman from the
opposing team.

In defence of the wicket, the batsman plays the ball with a wooden cricket bat and the other members of the bowler’s team stand in various positions around the field as fielders. Those are the players who retrieve the ball in an effort to stop the batsman from scoring runs and if possible, get them out. If the batsman doesn’t
get out, he can run between the wickets, as he exchanges ends with a second batsman (the non-sticker), who waits near the
bowler’s wicket. Each completed exchange of ends scores one run and runs are also scored if the batsman hits the ball to the boundary of the playing area.

An inning is completed if ten out of eleven batsmen are out or if the team batting last reaches the score required to win the match, the team is called all out. The team who has only one batsman left who
can bat, one or more of the remaining players are unavailable (because of injury), the team is also all out.

Cricket Fast Fact: More than 100 countries are affiliated with the International Cricket Council, cricket’s international governing body. www.mapleleafcricketclub.ca