Durham Cricket Club: 33 Years In The Making!

Born in the cricket conscious Caribbean twin-island
state of Trinidad and Tobago, Farheed Mohammed
immigrated to Canada in 1985. Not too long after
his arrival, Farheed began playing High School cricket at the
Overlea Secondary School, now known as Marc Garneau
Collegiate Institute, and which is located in Don Mills, North
York. The school’s cricket coach who was from Australia
thought Farheed a lot about the finer arts of the sport.

Having graduated from Overlea Secondary, Farheed
enrolled at Centennial College’s, Scarborough Campus.
Encouraged by the presence of quite a few East and West
Indian students within the Campus, Farheed and a friend
soon formed a cricket team. By so doing they created
history as theirs was indeed the College’s very first cricket
team and its initial introduction to the sport.

After leaving college, Farheed played for quite a few clubs
in the GTA. The discord that was sufficiently prevalent as
to obviously within the greater majority of the clubs he’d
joined, however, soon had Farheed thinking of forming one
of his own. The Durham Cricket Club (DCC) was, therefore,
subsequently founded by Farheed with very simple initial
objective of being completely free of the discord that he’d
experienced in his previous memberships.

Fuelled by his desire to continue playing competitive cricket,
Farheed then decided to join the Scarborough Cricket
Association’s (SCA) League with the Durham Cricket Club
as his very own team. That was now, a massively impressive
33 years ago. Since then Durham has played consistently
without pausing with the SCA. They have been champions
of the T20 tournament 5 times; four of which have been
consecutive. Although Durham has yet not won the
League’s 50 Overs championship, it has topped its Division
Conference a few times. Durham has also continuously and
consistently moved up through the League’s ranks to the
higher divisions. The Club eventually reached SCA’s Premie
Division, the League’s highest where it
stayed for 7 years before finally moving
back down to the 1st Division where it is
now currently very comfortably situated.

As should be expected of any cricket or
sporting club for that matter which has
existed for as long as three-plus decades,
Durham has faced its fair share of challenges.
The very lowest point it has experienced
to date was when it was forced to release
approximately 95% of its members due to
an onset of internal struggles and politics.

From the ashes of that enforced demolition
Farheed virtually restarted the club with
just its 5 remaining members. The biggest
challenges since then have been keeping
abreast with the financial aspect of running
the club and getting new experience
cricketing members who can help it to
continue growing and moving forward after
almost folding.

Now looking forward towards Durham’s
realization of its best possible future,
Farheed has identified the acquisition of the
funding required to allow members who
face financial struggles to play stress-free as
its greatest impending challenge. The need
to acquire up-to-date equipment will be
just as important as will the establishment
of a solid support base from among the
players and associates.

Having now survived for the 33 years
that have passed since it was initially
founded, through thick and thin, Durham
Cricket Club should easily overcome the
aforementioned challenges and indeed
any others it may face. With Farheed
continuing to provide his outstanding and
exemplary leadership, doing so should be
relatively easy.

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