Determined to continue playing the sport he has loved since the age of six, Singh quickly made connections with a small group of local South Asian ex-pats, cricketeers who jumped at the idea of forming a loosely organized league of sorts.
“We have been working hard to grow the game in Lac La Biche and get more people interested,” he stated. “Since — for the time being — we do not have a proper cricket ground in which to play on, we use the 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 definitely more than a few similarities between this historic British game and its American counterpart, as in both sports use a bat and ball, Singh makes it clear the games really aren’t in the same ballpark — no pun intended.
“People who know nothing about cricket have mistaken our game for baseball. While both sports have a batter, cricket, instead of a pitcher, has a bowler, who is responsible for throwing the ball,” he explained.
What is cricket?
But what truly sets cricket apart is the technicality as well as the rules of the sport. Cricket is played on grass in an oval shaped field. The fielding team has 11 players including the bowler. The batting team has two batters, one at each end of a 20-metre long strip at the centre of the oval. The fielders are positioned around the oval, including behind the batters … because batters can choose to hit balls in any direction, including behind them. Each batter stands at a set of wickets that the bowler is trying to hit. A typical match is played in a period of 50 overs — each over consists of six bowled balls.
“A batsman can be dismissed by either being bowled out, meaning the bowler has struck the wicket, or the all that is hit gets caught, which again is similar to baseball,” Singh said.
Although cricket is an established and growing sport in many Canadian cities, it has yet to become a big draw on the local sports scene, says Singh, who believes that as more people from cricket-playing nations like India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan and others put down roots in rural Canada, the popularity of the game will grow.
In time, Singh would like to see municipalities offering cricket clinics and equipment to residents interested in trying the sport.
“I would like to see the County providing equipment such as bats and balls as well as nets to local kids, which will encourage more of them to take up the game,” he said, adding that even though cricket is a very popular sport half-way around the world, the next superstars of the game could come from a local neighbourhood if more people get interested. “You never know, the next international player may very well come from Lac La Biche."
