The Yorkton Yorkers of the Saskatchewan Cricket League reached out to the community on Wednesday, July 24 to garner more interest in their sport. They held a cricket demonstration at Heritage Heights Park to educate those interested on the rules and how to play cricket.
Although Yorkers team captain Faisal Anwar would have liked more people to come out to the demonstration, he was pleased with the overall turnout.
"We hoped for more people to come out, but I'm happy with how it went," he said. "It wasn't a great turnout, but it was good. A lot of people in Yorkton aren't familiar with cricket, so we wanted to introduce the sport to them so they could learn it and play it."
During the demonstration, the Yorkers were excited to see some spectators unfamiliar with cricket volunteer to play the sport.
"It was good to see some people get involved," said Anwar. "I feel once they start playing it, they will want to play it more in the future. It is important to get them involved and not just tell them about it."
The Yorkers see growing cricket interest in Yorkton as a marathon not a sprint. They are going to continue to reach out to the community, including public schools, in hopes of gradually gaining more interest in the sport.
"I'm confident more people will want to tryout Cricket in Yorkton," said Anwar. "This is a very popular sport in other countries overseas. If more people learn the sport here, I'm sure they will like it too. We are going to go to the schools next year to teach the kids. We will show them how to play and play some one-hour matches and half-an-hour matches. We will also show them different types of cricket. Once they know you can play a quick game, they should start to want to play it. Most kids will like it once they start to hit the ball and learn it. For kids who like baseball, they should like cricket."
Anwar not only sees the importance of growing the sport in non-traditional cricket players, but also in foreigners who come from countries where cricket is popular.
"Cricket is like ice hockey to Canadians for some of us," he said. "It's important for people who come from other countries to continue some of their traditions and keep sports going like cricket here in Canada. Yorkton has a lot of people who weren't born in Canada or whose parents weren't born in Canada. It's good to give them the chance to play a sport like cricket."
In the 1990s, Nelson Mandela used rugby as a way to break racial intolerance in Â鶹´«Ã½AV Africa. Yorkton isn't faced with near the racial issues as Â鶹´«Ã½AV Africa dealt with, but Anwar sees cricket as a way to bring all walks of life in the community together to break some intolerance issues.
"It's a way to bring people from different cultures together," he said. "It can be used to make friends with people you wouldn't normally be friends with. It also can be used to break any intolerance once people get to know other people and see they aren't that different from them."
