Wicket good: Saint John is about to get its first proper cricket field

For Kapil Choudhary, the effort to get a proper cricket field in Saint John has been years in the making, and a wet experience at that. 

Right now, cricket players in the city have been playing on the centre oval at Exhibition Park Raceway, one of the few places large enough to play the game.

But, the president of Cricket N.B. said the raceway — being in a flood plain — doesn't respond well to getting wet.

"Whenever the rain happens, the ground is like — you can't use it for a month," Choudhary said in an interview with Information Morning Saint John.

"Last summer, like, a whole two months was washed-out games… Water and a cricket ball [don't] get along well."

So, when Saint John city council approved a proposal on Oct. 3 to move ahead on constructing a cricket field, Choudhary couldn't have been happier.

"This has been a long time coming and we are fortunate now we are getting it because we have a lot of people playing cricket," he said. "Cricket is growing in schools and community centres too, like, we are doing our clinics. So it is, like, great news."

The city says more than 100 men and women are registered on cricket teams in greater Saint John, and more than 400 players are registered province-wide.

Choudhary said that's just the people who want to play what he calls "leather ball cricket," the competitive, gear-on sport.

"There are so many people who just want to play the recreational [game] — girls, kids, older people, everybody."

Saint John has a long history with the game, with teams dating back to the 1800s. Cricket's popularity waned over the years, replaced by baseball as the most popular summer sport in the city. 

It started to make a comeback in the late 1990s as UNB Saint John saw more international