Batters, bowlers and wickets

An enthusiastic group of people, from children to seniors, took part in a cricket exhibition Saturday evening at the West End Community Centre (WECC).

The event was the result of solid organizational work by the Sault Community Career Centre’s Duane Moleni (pictured here).

Duane, a cricket lover who hails from New Zealand, moved to Sault Ste. Marie seven years ago, and is currently working at the Centre as its Research and Planning Coordinator for Passport to Unity.

Duane’s work is funded by Ontario’s Trillium Foundation, and began in December 2012 and runs through to spring of 2014.

Saturday’s cricket event is a new part of this year’s Passport to Unity celebrations, which reach a climax Sunday at the Essar Centre from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a rich offering of foods and entertainment from many cultures, as a celebration of Sault Ste. Marie’s ever-diversifying population. 

Speaking to SooToday.com Saturday, Duane said “my job is to help re-develop and add new concepts to Passport to Unity, so my thought was to add an element of sport to it because sport unites people.”

Duane told us he initially expected a maximum of 20 people from the community who already know the game to attend Saturday, but there were clearly more than that, many of them trying the game out for the first time.

That’s exactly what Duane wanted.

“The turnout we got tonight has been really positive.  It’s passed my expectations by a long shot.”

There was a diverse mix of people participating, from born-and-raised Saultites to new-to-the-Sault South Asians, Jamaicans and Saudi Arabians.

Duane told us he recently received an e-mail from an Australian doctor who will be moving to Sault Ste. Marie, asking whether there will be a cricket league in the community.

“That would be great,” Duane said, but added there would, of course, be costs involved, such as finding and paying for a facility.

“Trillium funding has led to the building of dedicated spaces for cricket in Southern Ontario.  As for Northern Ontario, no other community has a place like the West End Community Centre.”

“It’s fantastic, we’re quite blessed to have a facility like this.  The City really supported us in order to get people out and enthused, and the City’s hope is the same as mine, to have a league, and adding cricket to the WECC would truly make it a multi-purpose facility.”

Duane told us he hopes to have a Sault team compete against a North Bay team this summer, adding St. Joseph Township Mayor Jody Wildman is also interested in getting a league started up, with various communities playing each other.

Cricket is enormously popular in Duane’s native New Zealand, along with Australia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kenya, South Africa, the West Indies and, of course, England, where the game was invented.

Now, Canada and the U.S. have caught on, with Canada recently making the World Cup.

Each cricket team consists of 11 players, including a batter, a bowler and wicket keeper.

Bowlers and wicket keepers serve in very much the same capacity as baseball’s pitcher and catcher, respectively.

Each game consists of innings.  A team has to “out” 10 players from the opposing team before it takes its own turn at bat, as opposed to baseball’s “three and you’re out.”

Obviously, the better-hitting team with the most runs across the rectangular pitch is the victor.

Any other differences between cricket and baseball?

Nothing wrong with a gritty game of baseball, but you could call cricket more “gentlemanly.”

In fact, at one time, teams in England would break for tea!

Not likely to happen in our Canadian Tim Horton’s city, but regardless, a cricket presence in Sault Ste. Marie would make a great addition to our cultural and recreational landscape.