Sports and Multicultural Communities | Cricket for Integration

Certain sports constitute important vectors of social integration for Quebec’s multicultural communities. The Press decided to introduce you to three of them. Today: cricket.

Maninder Singh has been in Quebec for less than two weeks. He speaks neither French nor English. He is still looking for a job. In the circumstances, one might imagine him withdrawn, isolated. But on the cricket field in Aqueduc Park in Montreal, he feels more like a fish in water.

The newcomer already has the chance to be part of a team: the LaSalle Strikers. On the vast vacant lot, the faces of the Strikers are long. The team has just lost a hard-fought final against the Centennials.

Their pout will quickly disappear, however. The players’ children run left and right. Barbecues are lit, grills are distributed, beers are opened: the first part of the season has just ended. It’s a big celebration.

In the crowd, Maninder Singh is all smiles. He never thought he would integrate so quickly into his new country, after leaving Punjab, India.

At the beginning of the day, he had only one friend here. A childhood friend, who grew up on the same street as him, before immigrating to Canada. A few hours later, his contact book is already much more full.

“This tournament is a real blessing,” he rejoices, speaking to The Pressaided by an impromptu interpreter. “Cricket really does provide a great opportunity for networking.”

His teammates understand his journey well. Almost all of them, born in other countries, used cricket to integrate into Quebec.

“Whenever they can, Indians who immigrate to Canada find a team on social media,” says teammate Robin Sachdeva, himself a native of Haryana, India. “It’s a way to stay connected to the sport, and in a way, to home.”

“Most of the people you see on this field, the first thing they ever held in their life was a cricket bat,” he continued. “For them to be able to do it outside of their home country is a really unique opportunity.”

Talking to the members of the Strikers is also like going around the world. Some players come from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or the Caribbean. Others are natives of Pakistan, a country that experiences perpetual political tensions with India. Tensions, which, on the field, seem quite futile.

“Cricket unites people, and we want to prove it,” said captain Shahab Zamir, a native of northern Pakistan. “For us, playing together is a powerful symbol.”

Countering homesickness

While the Strikers enjoy a break in the shade to watch the finals of other divisions, the champions, the Centennials, are unable to sit still. Everyone wants their picture with the trophy.

“Cricket is not played for fun. If you win, you have fun, but if you don’t, you’re wasting your time,” said Suresh Ramkissoon, who was named his team’s most valuable player, with unwavering seriousness.

Like Suresh, most participants place a high value on their performance. Each player has a profile on the Cricket Quebec website, which lists all sorts of complex statistics. Some of them are even tallied in pie charts.

On site, the representative of The Press realizes it to his cost. He gets reprimanded a few times for standing too close to the lines or in front of the scoreboard. In short, cricket is no laughing matter here.

This does not prevent some players from keeping their childlike heart. A few steps away from Suresh Ramkissoon, his brother Pooran stands out. He socializes. Multiplies bursts of laughter, smiles. Let’s say that the two brothers embody the yin and yang.

Cricket is a family affair for the Ramkissoons. As children, they lived in a small coastal village in Guyana, South America. Every school day ended the same way. After lessons, the Ramkissoon brothers would join their friends in the street and play cricket.

Until one day the family had to pack up and leave. Their father, a farmer, was a victim of the too many floods that hit his land. Business was no longer profitable. So he came to Canada in search of a “better life”.

Adjusting to the winter and the language was difficult. Pooran missed the beaches, the food, the temperature at home. When homesickness got too strong, he would take his bat and ball and go and let off steam on the tree in front of the family home.

“I always did that in Guyana, but here I quickly noticed that it was abnormal. People looked at me as if I was an alien!” laughs Pooran Ramkissoon, now 29.

Standing back, umpire Ivor Roach looks on benevolently at the players. In his heart, cricket is also intimately linked to precious memories.

“In the 1970s, when I was still living in Jamaica, we always played in the streets. When a car came, we all had to squeeze in, like you do here with hockey. We didn’t have money for equipment, so we played with buckets for wickets and a branch for a bat. We made our own balls out of pieces of leather.”

Despite the years and immigration, this love remains unscathed. “My wife was warned before she married me: by choosing me, she was also marrying cricket,” says Mr. Roach, deadpan.

It took two years after arriving in Quebec in 2008 for Ivor Roach to realize that a cricket community existed in Montreal. He stood out as a player for a few years, before giving way to younger players.

Although he has hung up his helmet and bat, he remains involved in the sport. He works many hours of volunteer work. Many are the days when, after getting up at 4 a.m. to work in a factory, where he drives a forklift, he spends his afternoons in meetings with Cricket Québec.

“I want to stay connected to the sport as long as possible to share my knowledge with new generations. In a few years, I hope to be sitting on the sidelines, peacefully watching the games, knowing that our sport is healthy,” he hopes.

Lots of will, few facilities

If cricket can exist in Quebec, it is thanks to the volunteers who manage to supervise it. These good Samaritans give what they can, but are beginning to be victims of the success of their sport.

A few years ago, Cricket Québec had only 30 teams. This year, there are 56. If his predictions come true, 80 teams will be part of the organization next year.

The organization notes that there is a lack of fields to accommodate its 1,400 players. On the island of Montreal, there are nine usable fields, which are also used for other sports. Few of them are lit.

“All other sports can be played during the week, like soccer and baseball,” comments Cricket Quebec’s communications manager, Mudasser Akbar. We don’t have that luxury. All our players have to get together on the weekend, and limiting practices is far from ideal.”

Cricket Québec has approached the Quebec government, as well as the cities of Montreal, Boucherville, Longueuil, Brossard and Vaudreuil. For the moment, the organization is coming up against closed doors, particularly because these administrations still doubt the popularity of cricket.

“With the number of immigrants increasing, we expect that the sport will become more and more popular, and that creating new fields will become even more relevant,” says Mr. Akbar. “The government is always looking for ways to integrate new immigrants and we think that with our sport, we offer a very good gateway to do so.”