The Montreal Gazette
June 2 2008
Kids Had a Wicket Idea
Brenda Branswell

Students at Carlyle School pestered their principal to let them play a new sport at lunchtime. It wasn’t hockey or baseball they were clamouring to play – but cricket, one of the most popular sports in the world.

Last year, Grade 5 and 6 students brought a cricket bat to the Town of Mount Royal school and used sticks for makeshift wickets – the stumps a bowler tries to hit to get a batsman out. The school didn’t want students getting hurt with the hard outdoor cricket ball, so the persistent students brought in a tennis ball and – when that also got nixed – a foam Nerf ball, principal Itrat Ahmad said.

Faced with obvious interest in the game, the school launched an indoor cricket program in September.

”I was very surprised at how many kids knew what cricket was and had played before – and not just kids of South Asian origin,” said Angus Bell, a travel writer, cricket coach and transplanted Scotsman who has helped teach Carlyle students the game.

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