Cricket catching on in northeastern Ontario

The south Asian population of northeastern Ontario has been growing rapidly in recent years, and with that has come a rapid growth in the sport of cricket.

In a few short years, cricket clubs have been founded in North Bay, Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury, which is about to get its second cricket club.

Kings Cricket Club Sudbury will hold a launch party on May 11. It will operate alongside Big Nickel Cricket Club, which has been playing in the city since 2014.

Gurpreet Singh Broca, one of the founders of the new club, said they saw a need to establish another team because of the growing number of newcomers interested in playing.

"It's about, you know, giving back to the community," he said. 

"You want to give other people some chances which they could be good at and maybe teach others in the community who don't know much about the sport yet."

Singh Broca insists, though, that there will be no rivalry between the two cricket clubs.

"I think this would be a really good healthy competition because it'll improve the game that we play together in a more competitive spirit and will make us ready for maybe tougher competitions."  

Singh Broca said the new club has 35 registered members and they hope to expand and eventually include a women's cricket league and possibly a children's league.

There is only one full-sized cricket field within Greater Sudbury for teams to play games located in Capreol, but there is talk of the city setting up a second cricket oval in time for the 2025 season.

Schools include cricket in phys-education curriculum

You can also see cricket being played at schools in and around Sudbury.

The Rainbow District School Board, which operates English public schools in Greater Sudbury, Espanola, and Manitoulin Island, is now including cricket in its physical education curriculum for students from kindergarten to Grade 12.

"I think it adds a new part to gym and it's kind of exciting because usually you're playing the same sports such as soccer, basketball," said Owen Olivier, a Grade 9 student at Sudbury's Lasalle Secondary School who's learning to play cricket. 

"So it's fun to learn something different and about a different culture that plays the sport."

Matt Cootes, the board's physical education and physical literacy co-ordinator, said the school board received grant money from the Ministry of Education that has helped supply schools with cricket startup kits.

"We're going into schools and running workshops for staff and professional development, and running students through clinics as well to try and embed cricket as an activity as part of our physical literacy programming,"  he said.

"We're seeing a lot more of our community members who relate to the game or it's culturally significant for them. And we want to make sure that that is represented in our classrooms as well."