Yorkton has seen several new sports introduced to the area recently through clinics, development of league play and in the case of disc golf setting up a nine 'hole' course.
Family cricket was offered at the Gallagher Centre Flexihall over the weekend by the city recreation department and the Cavalier Sports Club from Regina.
Club captain Nauth Ramoo says the club was invited by Stephanie Lockhart, Yorkton Urban sports coordinator to conduct the clinic and promote the sport.
Cricket has been played in Saskatchewan since the 1930s, says Ramoo. It began to grow in the province over the past four or five years to the point where there are six teams in Regina and two in Saskatoon. The sport is pretty popular in B.C. Alberta and Ontario. "Believe it or not, cricket is the second largest team sport in the world behind soccer," Ramoo claims.
The first international cricket game was played between the United States and British colonial Canada on September 25, 1844. "As usual the Americans billed it as the Americans versus the British Empire's Canadian province. They lost, of course," Ramoo notes.
The second international game was played between Australia and England in 1877. "It took them 48 days to travel by boat from Australia to England to play a five day game," he adds.
Cricket is played by two teams with 11 players on each team. There's a batting team and a bowling team. The bowling team must put 10 people from the batting team out to complete an inning. Whatever score the batting team makes must be matched by the opponents. Whichever team is ahead at the end of the inning is declared the winner.
There are several ways to put a batter out in a cricket game. Batters may be put out while stealing runs, hitting a fly ball which is caught, or being caught off base. If in trying to hit the ball, the stumps get hit by the ball, the batter is out. If the ball is hit in the air and somebody catches it, the batter is out. If the ball hits the batter's legs and in the opinion of the umpire, if the batter's legs weren't there, the ball was going to hit the stumps, the batter is out. If a batter tries to steal a run and doesn't get back to the base in time, the batter is out.
The game is played on a circular field with a 65 yard radius. There are two bases called stumps. Two batsmen at a time run between the two bases after hitting the ball to score runs. Ramoo explains.
Hitting the ball out of the park in the air scores six runs. Hitting the ball out of the park on the ground, scores four runs. "Any other time as long as the ball stays within that circle, runners can run back and forth between the bases as many times as they want. That's how you score your runs," Ramoo says.
One team will bat first and one team will bat second as decided by a coin toss. "It's not like in baseball where the home team always bats second," Ramoo points out.
There seems to be some interest in cricket in the area, says Ramoo. The Cavalier Sports Club is always willing to come back to promote cricket and to help establish the game in the city.
Ramoo, who grew up with the sport, moved to Regina in 1980 where he learned to play cricket.
Next year the Cavalier Sport Club will field two team, an A and B team to accommodate the younger players under the age of 15 years attracted to cricket.
