The bat-and-ball sports world is separated into cricket- or baseball-playing regions. Although North America is firmly in the latter camp, both sports will be featured in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, because it can no longer be ignored that cricket fans (2.5 billion) far outnumber baseball fans (500 million) around the world.
Canada qualified for the 2024 T-20 World Cup over the summer, however, it remains a cricketing outpost. But Spencer Middle School teacher James Roy is doing his part to change that with the Island’s first school cricket league.
“We plan to start a league in District 62 schools and hope it is picked up and spreads across the Island,” said Roy, who teaches Grades 7-8 at Langford-based Spencer.
Roy grew up playing the game in his native Haryana state in India, the nation in which cricket is a national obsession, and whose population made it impossible for the International Olympic Committee to ignore. The booming pro Indian Premier League has become in cricket the equivalent of Major League Baseball. “Cricket has 2.5 billion viewership and is the second most watched game on TV after soccer,” Roy notes.
Passions are hard to supress and Roy organized a District 62 exhibition game recently played at Goudy Field featuring high school and middle-school students. It was the third year he has organized the event. Roy will also be conducting three cricket workshops for elementary-school students beginning Friday and running through the month at Ruth King, Savory and Lakewood elementary schools. A fundraiser for Spencer cricket will be held at the school on Saturday.
“There are a lot of great opportunities in our sport and I want to encourage more young people here to play the game,” said Roy.
“It’s a step-by-step process.”
Roy said the plan is to start the District 62 school league indoors in March and move it outside from April through June. What makes the cricket initiative even more impressive is that while there are baseball school academies, there are no organized school baseball leagues on the Island, as most baseball players here play in outside youth leagues. Roy encourages that, too, noting he would love to see his school initiatives spillover into the youth teams of the Westshore Cricket Club and Island Cricket Club at the Metchosin Oval: “Local men’s cricket club has now started asking me about good names of our good players to join their team.”
The advantage of cricket is that it has three versions that are adaptive to any situation. There is still the full-on five-day Test version for traditionalists. One-day internationals are known as ODI and is the version played in the major World Cup contested by nations every four years. The burgeoning T-20 format of between two- to three-hour games is featured in the IPL, and will be played in the Olympics, and is the version that most fits into the cultural North American sporting norms for game running times.
There is something for everyone, says Roy, as he looks to realize his dream of bringing cricket to Island schools.
