Some Ontario Cricket Events Held Despite COVID’s Restrictions!

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on
cricket communities in Ontario and in Canada, leading
to significant restrictions on all sports.
Cricket Ontario and its member organizations were able
to host a limited number of events successfully at the Senior,
Women and Junior levels – these included modified League’s
championship, tournaments, development programs and
educational courses.
The highlight of the year has been the successful hosting
of Ontario -Youths Under-18 and Under -16 and Women
Provincial (Regional) Championships.
INTERNATIONAL CRICKET
Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 no international event took
place in Ontario.
DOMESTIC CIRCUIT
Despite the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Cricket in Ontario
was riding an upswing of the interest in the game, to meet
the growing demand, leagues waited for the COVID19
restrictions to be lifted and adopted the safety protocols
developed by Cricket Ontario “Safe Resumption to Play
Cricket In the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic” and
introduced more mid-week T20 and Morning T20 leagues
on the weekend to salvage the season and provide the
opportunity to the cricketers to play, have fun in the safe
environment.
Some members were able to successfully stage a modified
season of T25 & 50 overs competitions offering their teams
9 or the regular 16 games, playing under the bubble
restrictions imposed by the government. These adaptations
by our members demonstrated their eagerness and ability
to ensure that the game was played, and its
members were engaged.
These initiatives were great news for The Sport
Cricket in Ontario.
This is an indication of the increasing popularity of
Cricket in Ontario at all levels and Cricket Ontario
is proud of the members creative thinking and
initiative to produce excellent results in meeting
the interest of demand and promotion of Cricket
in the community and meeting the demands of our
cricketers.
It was a very disappointing moment for Cricket
Ontario to cancel our development High
Performance winter camps for Women and Youth.
However, we were able to successfully organize
our premier events, Regional Championship for the
Women and Youths. Both championship games
were streamed live on Cricket Ontario own YouTube
Channel.
These major events are the result of the Cricket
Ontario implementation of strong and healthy
youth cricket development program that provides
essential support for the future growth of senior
cricket to flourish in Ontario and Canada.
In Women’s cricket development area, as I
mentioned earlier, unfortunately, we had to cancel
our Winter HP camp, despite the cancellation of HP
Camp, the interest in women’s cricket was extremely high.
The Women Regional Championship participation
was exceptionally good, and the participating
teams enjoyed the tournament. All games were
Stream live on Cricket Ontario YouTube Channel.
UMPIRING
Despite the COVID19 Pandemic, all umpiring
associations in Ontario organized the virtual
education sessions keeping the umpire’s engaged
and their understanding of the rules, as well
as keeping them updated with the new rules
changes. The umpiring educational seminars
continue to play a major role in their improve
on-field performances and improvement in their
overall game management in terms of education,
consistency and producing ICC standard umpires.
COACHING CERTIFICATION
As we shared in last month’s report that Cricket
Ontario in partnership with Cricket Canada has
joined Coaches Ontario and Coaches Canada
National Coaching Certification Program to
help coaches with standardized coaching
philosophy and methods that has been used for
all major sports in Canada and Internationally.
We have now successfully completed the final
phase of the NCCP coaching certification
program and ICC/CC Level 1 certification course
has also been completed. We have now built
up the capacity of instructors and evaluators to
deliver the courses and evaluate participants
coaches during the practical sessions.
The 25 participants from our members league
across the province participated in the NCCP coach
enhancement program. The whole process of
certification includes the following:
1. Participants attended 3 days Coaches Ontario
education program on Making Ethical Decision,
Plan a Practice, and a course on Teaching &
Learning.
2. We then further enabled these participants
to take the Coaching Evaluator & Coaching
Facilitator programs
3. ICC/CC Level 1 coaching course that all
participants took to complete the program.
CRICKET ONTARIO TOURNAMENTS
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has
caused a significant disruption to the Cricket
Ontario 2021 activities calendar. We had to
cancel our Youth and Women development
camps and waiting to see how the situation
unfolds in near future to determine if we have
to reschedule the activities that are pending
COVID19.

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