Global T20 cricket tournament returns after a four-year hiatus

Growing up in northwestern Toronto, Rayyan Pathan’s dreams of one day rubbing shoulders with the greatest cricket players on the planet were about as unlikely as a kid from St. Lucia hoping to play on Connor McDavid’s left wing.

But after a trip to Lord’s Cricket Ground in England as a teenager helped water the seed, Pathan has gone on to carve out a career in the sport, playing internationally for Canada for the past decade.

And those childhood dreams were realized with the launch of the Global T20 tournament five years ago. Played under the sport’s streamlined T20 rules – meaning a 20-over-per-team affair that allows for games to be completed in under three hours – the GT20 is back this year after a four-year pandemic-induced hiatus.

Taking place in Brampton, the franchise-based tournament features six teams, drawing from the best Canadian talent as well as some of the greatest players from all four corners of the cricket-playing world, counting 24 nationalities in total.

Chief among them are superstars such as Chris Gayle of the West Indies, and the Pakistani triumvirate of Shahid Afridi, Fakhar Zaman and Mohammad Rizwan, the latter two currently teammates of Pathan on the Vancouver Knights.

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“All these guys, we grew up watching on TV, right? So for us, it’s surreal,” the 31-year-old Pathan said. “Obviously we worked hard and we all prayed that the Canadian guys get this opportunity where we can showcase ourselves on this platform. But when I was 17 in England and I got a chance to go there, I didn’t think I’d get this far. But I did put in a lot of hard work.”

That work continued Thursday, as Pathan partnered with another Canadian international, Harsh Thaker, to ensure that the Knights advanced to the tournament playoffs at the expense of the Toronto Nationals. The pair put on an effective 22-run partnership before Pathan – who had already clobbered one six – was caught trying to smash another ball over the boundary.

But it was Thaker who delivered the true star turn. After capturing four wickets as a bowler and scoring 23 runs off just 18 deliveries, Thaker wasn’t just the standout Canadian in the match, he was the standout player, period – receiving his second man-of-the-match award of the tournament for his efforts.

After debuting for his country four years ago, the 25-year-old Thaker knows the importance of the GT20 for the country’s continued growth as a cricketing nation, particularly with Canada facing important qualifiers in Bermuda next month for the 2024 T20 World Cup.

“It’s massive for Canadians to get this tournament, get this opportunity to play at this level, play in front of these crowds, it’s huge,” he said. “We learn a lot and hopefully we can take this. We have important World Cup qualifiers coming up. Hopefully we make the World Cup and go from there.”

One of Thaker’s four wickets was that of his national team captain, Saad Bin Zafar of the Toronto Nationals, who was caught and bowled by his younger colleague for eight runs. But no matter. Bin Zafar says as a Canadian it’s just unbelievable to be playing with bona fide cricketing superstars – he says he couldn’t speak to Gayle for the first week the two played as teammates back in 2018.

Like Pathan, Bin Zafar also went to England as a youngster as part of Cricket Across The Pond, a community initiative by professional accountancy body CIMA Canada and the City of Toronto. Each year, a team of young players from some of Toronto’s most diverse neighbourhoods heads overseas to play cricket and learn some life lessons.

For young, aspiring cricketers, Bin Zafar says the program can be a life-altering experience.

“I think Cricket Across the Pond was a great tournament experience for young lads,” the 36-year-old said. “It was the first time where we got to play on amazing infrastructure, amazing facilities. We actually got a feel of how the actual cricket is played, because England is the home of cricket.”

The GT20 tournament, which wraps up with the playoff final on Sunday, has been played on a cricket pitch a stone’s throw from Brampton’s CAA Centre, the one-time home of the OHL’s Brampton Battalion. The temporary stands surrounding the pitch can house approximately 5,000 fans, and even for a weekday contest that began midafternoon, the presence of players such as Afridi – who was serenaded with his nickname of “LaLa” by fans when he came in to bat – brought out a crowd of roughly half that.

Food trucks outside the stadium were representative of the mini United Nations playing cricket inside, with chicken curries, sugar cane juice and kulfi (Indian ice cream) all for sale, alongside Canadian staples such as poutine.

The hope is that a tournament such as the GT20 can help inspire the politicians at all three levels of government to make this kind of infrastructure a more permanent affair.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Marc Miller, Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, all made it out to see the action, with Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown acting the glad-handing host, joining with Miller on Thursday to throw rubber cricket balls and T-shirts into the crowd.

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Whether or not he’s looking to court favour with his voters, Brown certainly seems keen on cricket. Brampton currently has 18 cricket pitches, with three more coming into play next spring, he says.

“We have empty baseball diamonds but we can’t keep up with cricket fields,” Brown said, adding there are 450 teams in a Brampton recreational cricket league. “We’d like to promote Brampton as the capital of cricket in Canada.”

For those at the heart of the sport in this country, that development of infrastructure is the next step in the sport’s evolution in this country.

“One hundred per cent,” said Richard Berridge, the chief executive officer of GT20. “We need the governments and the cities to build stadiums. It comes down to that and we want to make sure at some point in the future that Montreal, Vancouver, Mississauga, other parts of Toronto, London, we can have stadiums.”

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With a projected 80,000 fans coming to watch over the course of the tournament, which is stretched over 18 days and broadcast on CBC Gem and online, there is certainly an appetite for the sport. That can only help to build momentum.

“That stuff is happening,” Thaker said. “I think we just got to keep winning as a national team and a tournament like GT20 is huge to the market. The market is massive.”

With a report from Marty Klinkenberg