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A New Pitch

Will the Sahara Cup help popularise the game in Canada?

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A New Pitch
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THE Karl Auty Trophy, the coveted symbol of cricket supremacy that the US and Canada play for every year, is steeped in history. Rivalry between the neighbours began way back in 1840, well over three decades before England first began touring Australia to play Test matches. But, this year, cricket's oldest surviving rivalry had to make way for the contemporary game's most lucrative match-up: India vs Pakistan. To accommodate the nine-day Sahara Cup '96 in Toronto—the first edition of a series of five one-dayers scheduled to be played annually between the arch-rivals—the Canadian Cricket Association (CCA) chose to shelve the Auty Trophy tie until next year. They sacrificed a bit of the past to get a hold on the future. And gladly.

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But isn't history sacred here, anymore? Well, it is. The Sahara Cup matches—all five of them—were, after all, International Cricket Council (ICC)-recognised one-day internationals. It was the first time that such games were being played anywhere in North America. They did, indeed, make history, besides opening up a new offshore theatre of operations for some hi-voltage India-Pakistan cricketing battles. "We are here to promote the game in North America," said I.S. Bindra, president of the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI), before the series got under way. "But that doesn't mean we are taking the matches lightly. We are here to win," declared Indian team manager Sandip Patil. And halfway through the Sahara Cup, Pakistan skipper Wasim Akram agreed: "Our principal aim may be the promotion of cricket, but every match will be hard fought. No quarters will be given, none asked for."

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 Indeed, it wasn't pyjama cricket that was on show. And the Sahara Cup was only the beginning. Plans are now afoot to put together a similar series in New York, probably by next year. And, as Bindra revealed in Toronto, a third team, perhaps Sri Lanka, could well be added to the line-up for the Big Apple event. To underscore India's commitment to the growing movement to spread the game to non-traditional areas, BCCI secretary Jagmohan Dalmiya was in Kuala Lumpur roughly around the same time for the Asian Cricket Conference Pepsi Cup, in which Thailand, Japan, Nepal and Fiji participated.

In Canada, of course, cricket, despite being a minor sport, is no new import. But officials and players in Toronto are all agreed that, despite the cancellation of the Auty Trophy tie, the Sahara Cup is a step in the right direction. "Canadian cricket needs all the help and encouragement that it can muster," says Ali Hasanie, the first vice-president of the CCA and chairman of the Sahara Cup organising committee. "To take the game to the grassroots, we have to increase its visibility. This series between two top-notch teams is our first salvo." So the thin attendance on the first two days was a trifle disappointing, but once the sun came out, the turnout was pretty healthy.

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But attendance in the grand stand was not what the International Management Group (IMG), conducting and marketing the event, was looking for. They had their sights firmly on the sale of TV rights. It was a sellout. Although profit figures are not available, the matches, according to IMG's Andrew Wildblood, were beamed live to more than two billion viewers in India, Pakistan, the Caribbean islands and the UK. Doubtless, the spoils for the participants in the mega--event couldn't have been insubstantial.

The atmosphere at the Toronto Cricket Club was not exactly electrifying, with no more than 5,500 Indians and Pakistanis in the stands. But, as Indian captain Sachin Tendulkar said: "they were surprisingly noisy.... Every word the crowd uttered could be heard in the middle. The ground is so small." More important, the matches wrested a great deal of space in local newspapers like The Toronto Star, not known to go overboard over cricket.

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Will the Sahara Cup leave a lasting impression on aspiring Canadian cricketers and inspire them to emulate the feats of their heroes? The man who led Canada in its only appearance in the World Cup in 1979, Chris Chappell, is convinced that it will. Derek Pereira, a young Sri Lankan Canadian who Chappell feels is one of the country's players of the future, was among the spectators and watching the likes of Tendulkar, Mohammad Azhar-uddin, Akram, Waqar Younis and Salim Malik in action can't but help an upcoming cricketer.

 "Matches of the Sahara Cup kind can only help the cause of cricket. Interest in cricket is waning among the Canadian youth," says Chappell. "If we can get good international matches to the country, and convince Canadian clubs that have grounds of their own to lay emphasis on turf wickets, the game will improve steadily."

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Indeed, good pitches are a rarity in Canada today. The Toronto Cricket Club is the only venue that has a turf wicket. "Cricket in Canada is played entirely on matting wickets," says Chappell, "and until we play regularly on turf pitches, the quality of our game can't be lifted."

Canada's cricket administrators are alive to the problem and have drawn up a blueprint to develop world class infrastructural facilities to enable the country to be one of the joint hosts of the World Cup when theevent comes to the West Indies by 2003.

Says Hasanie: "Over the next four years, at least 10 grass wickets will be developed all over the country. Besides, a stadium that can hold 30,000 to 50,000 spectators will be built to host world class cricket matches." Mike Corley, a groundsman from Scarborough, Yorkshire, who laid the Toronto Cricket Club pitch, has offered to help out in the project. Besides, the University of Guelph is conducting tests on a range of grass varieties, given the severe winters in Canada.

The CCA is down to serious business. Gone are the fun-and-game days of the Skydome matches, which were played between 1989 and 1992 to raise funds for charity. Big-time cricket in Canada is getting closer to the real thing. And earnest efforts are on to give Canada the array of basic facilities it requires to emerge as a viable venue for first-class cricket.

While international cricketers have visited Toronto for decades now, the most recent engagements that cricket lovers in Canada's largest city were exposed to were organised by United Way's South Asian Committee inthe gargantuan Skydome, which has a retractable ceiling. Recalls United Way's Ahmad Saidullah, who until last year edited CCA's cricket annual The Canadian Cricketer : "The first Skydome exhibition tie in the late '80s was watched by over 40,000 spectators and half a million dollars were raised." But the next time around, the Skydome doubled its rentals and even the players got greedy. The organisers paid for TV coverage instead of the other way around, as it is now. No wonder, the Skydome experiment died a quick death.

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BUT the latest experiment to give Canadian cricket a boost seems to be on much firmer ground. The game hasalways been alive and kicking in Canada despite the sudden decline in its fortunes after World War II. But waves of immigrants from cricket-playing regions—India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Caribbean—since the mid-'60s helped revive the game. Canada now seems to be ready to make the big leap. With eight of the 10 provinces boasting active cricket associations, upwards of 250 clubs playing in leagues and knockout tournaments around the nation and over 30,000 players involved in the game, limited-overs cricket has survived in the country. Although baseball in summer and ice hockey in winter have ensured that cricket remains a minor sport because of lack of support from TV, the CCA, strapped for cash as all federal funding has been turned off, is going all out to popularise the game.

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According to Hasanie, the CCA is currently working out the modalities for a quadrangular tournament involving Australia, South Africa, West Indies and Sri Lanka in July next year. "We are in the process of negotiation with the respective boards," he says. Hasanie is confident that Canada will qualify for the next World Cup because "we have a very good team that is capable of doing well in the ICC Trophy tournament scheduled for March 1997 in Malaysia".

But Chappell is not so sure. "It's an age-ing team. The average age is 30-plus. Although there are players in the squad who are talented individually, it might not work. We have good batsmen but no penetrative bowlers," he says. In what way was the 1979 Canadian team different? "As individuals, we might not have been as good as some of today's players, but our commitment was higher. We played hard and our fielding was first-rate. The level of commitment is not quite the same today." 

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Federal cutbacks in funding for cricket have led to fewer tours being undertaken by Canadian teams. And for Chappell, that is where the problem lies. "There was a time when we would go on tours twice or thrice a year. Now, we would be lucky to go on just one," he says. As a result, Canadian cricketers are reduced to simply playing against each other. Very few people have had the opportunity to play at the highest level. Which makes them sitting ducks against truly top-class competition. This year, Canada will participate in the Shell-Sandals limited-overs competition in the West Indies against teams like Trinidad, Jamaica and Barbados. "But that is not enough. In the absence of greater international exposure, many of our players will discover to their consternation that they are not up to the mark yet. When you suddenly come up against someone like Curtly Ambrose, he can kill you. Boom! He is in a different league," warns Chappell.

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It is this 'different' league that Canada is aspiring to. And each time Waqar Younis ran up to bowl to Tendulkar at the Toronto Cricket Club last week—"the best against the best," as the commentator on the public address system proclaimed—the country's cricketing fraternity perhaps got a little step closer to their collective dream. Derek Pereira, watching the action intently from the clubhouse, most certainly did.

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