‘A golden moment for Canada’
Canada whopped Bangladesh’s ass!
‘A golden moment for canadian cricket’
Snob-sport image hurt cricket’s appeal in Canada
Jason Fekete
The Ottawa Citizen
CREDIT: Michael Walker, The Associated Press
Canada’s Desmond Chumney holds the flag high as he celebrates his team’s stunning upset over world-ranked Bangladesh at the Cricket World Cup yesterday.
Canada’s stunning victory yesterday over top-10-ranked Bangladesh at the Cricket World Cup is sending shockwaves around the cricket world, but only a minor rumble is likely to be felt here.
Born in England centuries ago, cricket is dominated by British Commonwealth countries. But it hasn’t blossomed into a passion-filled crowd favourite in Canada as it has in England, Australia and the West Indies. So, who’s to credit, or blame, for the sport’s historical struggle for popularity in Canada?
Blame it on the rich, says a Harvard University professor who co-authored a paper on the sport’s global diffusion.
“Cricket hasn’t traditionally been popular in Canada because elites took it as something to be their own,” said Jason Kaufman, an assistant professor of sociology at the Cambridge, Massachusetts school. “They made it a country-club type of sport so the common man in the street wouldn’t have any way to learn cricket and wouldn’t have any people to play with, and they would look to other sports.”
Cricket has very much been a class-specific British pastime, but it’s not as if the sport didn’t cross the Atlantic into Canada. Mr. Kaufman says the first international cricket game was actually played between Canada and the U.S. in 1844, but the sport’s growth was stunted by its class-conscious history.
“Elites faced a difficult problem in trying to maintain their distinction in the face of capitalism, where potentially anyone can get rich,” he said. “So they looked for a way to separate themselves from the middle classes, and cricket was a British adaptation that would allow Canadian and American elites to perpetuate their sense of distinction.”
All of these explanations seem to avoid the most glaring reason for cricket not attracting Canadian masses – six months of winter each year. It’s awful difficult to play a sport in the snow when a lush, grassy pitch is needed – although the Canadian team practices in sub-zero temperatures.
But Mr. Kaufman doesn’t buy that argument.
“I don’t think weather is an excuse at all for the sport’s lack of popularity in Canada,” he said. “Baseball is popular among Canadians, and you can’t play it in the winter.”
Well, then, perhaps Canadians can’t dissect the complicated scoring system?
Take, for example, Canada’s Canada’s line from the official scorecard in yesterday’s World Cup rugby match: 180/10 after 49.1 overs. Run rate: 3.66.
“Every sport has its statistics, vocabulary and euphemisms. It’s part of what makes sport popular,” Mr. Kaufman said. “It’s no more complicated than other sports.”
There’s as little history for Canada at the Cricket World Cup as there is among the mass public. Canada’s only other appearance at the World Cup was in 1979, when it went 0-3.
“It’s perverse that a sport that was lost to Canada because of it’s elitism is now regained because of the non-elites cultivating the sport.”
© Copyright 2003 The Ottawa Citizensource : Canada.com
) on their first win. 
i was not aware of that. That’s awesome, Masha’Allah. (lol @ zakhmon par namak - sorry).