All this, would have been repeated every year previous to this. None of this would be new. What will be different this year will have something to do with a fighting win over a small but populous country from the Indian sub-continent in a tournament that is held once every four years. It will also have a fair bit to do with a man called John Davison. And, what must rank as the most unexpected sporting photograph ever, that of a flag waving Desmond Chumney.

Canada played in the 1979 World Cup in England, but no one outside of Canada really took notice. Yet, for those who played, it must have been an unforgettable experience. When I once mentioned a particular dismissal of his by the great Pakistani bowler Imran Khan, current Ottawa league player and umpire, Cecil Marshall, smiled in recollection. This is what playing in a Cricket World Cup can do to you. Batsmen when reminded of their dismissals only smile.
Similar sentiment will be expressed during this Canadian cricket season. And, this will add a bit of spark. Players who would previously have played only for the love of the game will now play for a bit more. Maybe, for a place in the Canadian team, perhaps for a chance to face the best in the world in four years' time.

Cricket, much like baseball, is a team game within which at a given moment, the focus is on a match up of the skills of two individuals. It is a game within a game, in more than a manner of speaking. It shares this peculiar characteristic with baseball and perhaps only with baseball. You see fleeting instances of this in other games like hockey or basketball or soccer. But, it is never as prolonged and pronounced or as dramatic. A bowler and a batsman are engaged in a little battle of their own for an over at a time. An over is six consecutive balls bowled by a bowler from one end of the pitch. No, I am not getting my nouns mixed up. A pitch in cricket is the length of ground that forms the legal distance of 22 yards between the two sets of stumps which the two batsmen set out to guard. A bowler once done with an over sets out to take his place in field, and a second bowler tries from the other end of the pitch. Cricket in its basic form is this, two bowlers operating from two ends trying to get two batsmen out. It's a bit like baseball with two bases, the mound doubling up as first base, with the home base and the mound swapping places every six pitches.

This swapping can be crucial in cricket, for it balances conditions if they favour one end of the pitch in some way. Wind in one direction could be favourable to a particular type of bowler. The state of the pitch could be different at the two ends. This is critical in cricket, since the bowler in an effort to move the ball off the pitch, makes it bounce once before it gets to the batsman. A grassy pitch affords more sideways movement, while a drier, more scuffed up one allows for more spin when the ball meets the pitch. A groundsman might intentionally leave more grass at one end of a pitch or a pitch might become more scuffed up at one end as the match progresses. The swapping of ends thus promotes more variety in mode of attack from a bowling point of view.

Cricket matches are of different durations. The shorter variant is generally made up of two 50 over innings. In most Canadian cricket leagues, it's 45 overs each. A team is considered to have made a good score if it gets to around 250. Again, in the local Ottawa league, a score of around 200 would be considered very good. So then, to the serious business of making runs. There are the equivalents of stealing a base, but the main method of run-making is when a batsman hits the ball a distance sufficient enough to ensure that he gets to the other end of the pitch without getting run out. Meanwhile, the second batsman (or the non-striker in cricketing terms) gets to the safety of the striker's end. Unlike in baseball, the striking batsman is not forced to run on hitting the ball. He is allowed to judge the run and run only when he thinks he has a reasonable chance of making it to the other end. He can hence defer his decision on running to when he feels he has beaten the field. If he has hit the ball far enough from a fielder, he can try running a two, or a three. And, in big cricket stadia, maybe even a four. An even number of runs per stroke would get him back to the striker's end while an odd number of runs would get his partner to face the bowling. If he hits the ball so that it bounces at least once before it crosses the boundary, the batsman gets four runs. A ball going over the boundary directly without bouncing gives you six, the equivalent of a home run.

The basic modes of dismissing a batsmen are fairly straightforward and again bear resemblance to baseball. The equivalent of a strike is when a bowler bowls a ball that gets past the batsman and hits the stumps, thus disturbing the bails placed on top of the stumps. Beating a batsman which in cricketing parlance means getting the ball past the bat, isn't enough however. That does not constitute a strike as in baseball. A batsman is allowed also to not hit a ball or to let the ball go to the wicketkeeper if he feels it won't hit the stumps. It needs just the one striking of the stumps to get him out however. It is as if he is perpetually two strikes down. A batting mistake thus in cricket is much more fatal than in baseball. A bowler can get the batsman out caught by any of eleven fielders including himself and the wicketkeeper. The wicketkeeper is the catcher behind the stumps.

There is then the often controversial method of dismissal, the leg-before-wicket. When the batsman's leg-guards or pads get hit by the ball, without touching his bat first, and the pads are in a direct line with the stumps, and additionally, the umpire thinks the ball would have hit the stumps but for the pads getting in its way, he is given out lbw (leg-before-wicket). Since the ball could deviate a fair bit sideways on hitting the pitch, this seemingly simple judgement becomes a bit subjective, to put it mildly. Much like the judgement of the strike zone by the baseball umpire, this is a source of endless cricketing debate. At least in baseball, the ball does pass through the strike zone, in cricket you have to extrapolate because the ball doesn't in this case, get past the pads.

Ten batsmen dismissed or 45 overs, whichever comes first, constitutes an innings. Don't let the seemingly long duration bother you. An innings is easily broken into 3 phases. The first phase is when the ball is new. A cricket ball behaves markedly differently when new, as long as it retains its layer of polish. It swings much more in the air and the harder seam makes it move more on hitting the pitch. Generally, batting in the first 10 to 15 overs is much harder than the following 15. The final 15 is when batsmen really assert themselves, especially if they have more than half the team not out. An understanding of this sort is crucial to the enjoyment of the game. The final objective of the game is of course as in baseball to score more runs than the opposition or to get them out for a score lesser than yours.

This year has been a very good one for Canadian sport. The Canucks have pulled 2-1 ahead of the Wild. The Senators and the Flyers are level at 2 games apiece in a very closely fought series. Mike Weir became the first Canadian to win the US Master's. Admittedly, Canada's win over Bangladesh in the Cricket World Cup pales in comparison. But, this and John Davison's fastest century in World Cup history against the West Indies must have gladdened many a cricketer's heart. It was a triumph for the spirit of the amateur in this all-consuming era of professional sport. If you come watch cricket on a summer weekend at the Rideau Hall Grounds, you will share in this spirit. Perhaps, you might even see a future Canadian star in action. Very definitely, you will understand more of this beautiful game.