Pitch perfect: Cricket N.L. wants local players to help restore the province's connection to the game

If you closed your eyes and just listened to the crack of the bat and the cheers from the field, it could have been senior baseball at St. Pat's ballpark or softball at Bannerman Park. 

But this was cricket. An old sport that's new again — and looking to grow in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

"It's the game that we picked up but it belongs to Newfoundland. Cricket is a part of Newfoundland," said Rubin Deol, president of Cricket N.L., in a recent interview. 

The volunteer organization he heads was founded in 2010 but according to Deol the history of the sport in this province goes back to the 1820s, when the St. John's Cricket Club was established. 

He said the sport expanded to Harbour Grace, Twillingate and Trinity, with the heyday of the game running from about 1880 to 1910. The sport then began to decline before the First World War, when soccer and baseball began to grow in popularity.

However, on a windy but sunny Saturday in the summer of 2022, at an old provincial training field in Torbay, a new group of cricketers proves its revival is very real; Cricket N.L. boasts a membership of about 250 people.

"It brings them home," said Deol. "It gives a sense of community to all the young people who come here … from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Africa — we have representation from almost every part of the world here on the cricket field."

Tendai Mundunge of Zimbabwe arrived in St. John's in 2014 to go to school. 

It was a chance encounter while out on a walk that got him involved again in the sport he grew up playing.

"I saw people playing cricket in a park with a tennis ball," he said.

"For five years I thought there was no cricket here but after I saw them playing in the parking lot, that's how I got involved and started