In a fitting finale to the somewhat hurried and a botched story, a Canadian player stole the limelight in the final of the inaugural Canadian T20 Cricket League, with Saad bin Zafar putting up a scintillating show with both bat and ball to take Vancouver Knights to victory against CWI “B” team to win the title.
A point, that needs to be looked closely in the next editions of the tournament to ensure more number of Canadian players to feature regularly in the starting XI’s of the franchise teams in the event. Ranjit Saini had already indicated that in the coming editions, specific number of overseas professionals will be replaced by Canadian domestic players and the provision to mandatory include more than one player to feature in the starting XI.
A collective effort by Sheldon Cottrell (4/29), Fawad Ahmed (3/24) and Saad bin Zafar (2/26) for Vancouver Knights restricted CWI “B” team to 145 in only 17.4 overs, after which the knocks by Saad bin Zafar (79 n.o off 48) and Rassie van der Dussen (44 n.o off 41) made it an easy chase as Vancouver reached 148/3 in 17.3 overs to comfortably win the final by 7 wickets margin.
The final saw a substantial amount of crowd attending the match for the first time at Maple Leaf Cricket Club in King City, Toronto. After two full weeks of sporadic attendance, the turn-out must have brought some cheers for the organisers. Yet, it did not change the fact that the playing surface and the ground itself needs a major face-lift if it continues to host the future editions.
Broadcasting Deals with majors such as Star Network, Fox Network and others including digital platforms like Hotstar and Cricingif meant that the action was available to be seen live both on TV and Internet for everyone to enjoy and the viewership numbers from India and Nepal should be substantial in the overall figures for the tournament.
The future is secured as of now by Mercuri Canada, the subsidiary of its Indian Parent company, and much will depend on how the second edition gets hosted and conceptualised in a far better way to keep the investors and broadcasters interested to shell out more to cover the tournament.
To not have a mandate to include Associate members in playing XI’s will not go down well in the future. Indeed some of the players for the opportunity to be in the same team camp with the known bigger T20 circuit stars, a not so definite starting XI rule rules out their participation in more matches in the event. And when given the chance, some of them have shown that they do can play (as equals, if not better at times) well alongside the bigger names.
It has been a commendable job to have the tournament scheduled, started and finished on time as per the plan and now with a year on hand, things should be taken care of in a much better planned way, rather than organising in such short notice and missing out on some of the essentials for players, who are out in the middle.
