A local group hopes cricket will win over new athletes

DEER LAKE – When Gagandeep Singh arrived in Lac La Biche last year, he found himself in a sporting landscape dominated by hockey and baseball, a far cry from his native New Zealand, where cricket is a national obsession.

Singh decided to continue playing the sport he had loved since the age of six and quickly connected with a small group of local South Asian ex-pats, cricketers who jumped at the idea of ​​starting a loosely organized league.

“We’ve been working hard to grow the game in Lac La Biche and get more people interested,” he said. “Because – for now – we don’t have a proper cricket ground to play on, we use sports fields at the Bold Center and try to have a couple of matches a week.”

To the uninitiated, cricket appears to be similar to baseball. And while there are certainly more than a few similarities between this historic British game and its American counterpart, as both sports use a bat and a ball, Singh makes it clear that the games are definitely not in the same ballpark—no pun intended.

“People who don’t know anything about cricket have likened our game to baseball. Both sports have a bat, whereas cricket has a bowler who is responsible for throwing the ball instead of a bowler,” he explained.

What is cricket?

But what really sets cricket apart are the technicalities and rules of the sport. Cricket is played on grass on an oval pitch. The fielding team has 11 players including the bowler. The batting team has two bats, one at each end of the 20 meter long strip in the middle of the oval. The fielders are placed around the oval, including behind the batsmen… because the batsmen can hit balls in any direction, including behind them. Each batter stands at the batters the bowler is trying to hit. A typical match is played over a period of 50 overs – each over consisting of six bowling balls.

“A batsman can be dismissed either by throwing him out, which means the bowler has bowled, or whatever is hit is caught, which again is similar to baseball,” Singh said.

While cricket is an established and growing sport in many Canadian cities, it has yet to become a major draw for the local sporting scene, says Singh, who believes that as more people come home from cricket-playing countries such as India, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan and others took root in rural Canada, the game is growing in popularity.

In time, Singh would like to see municipalities provide cricket clinics and equipment for residents interested in trying the sport.

“I would like the county to provide local children with equipment such as bats and balls and nets, which will encourage more of them to play,” he said, adding that while cricket is a very popular sport. – The superstars following the game around the world could come from the local neighborhood if more people were interested. “You never know, the next international player may well come from Lac La Biche.”