Boundaries North is one of the most innovative and exciting organizations in the cricket world today. It’s a private company that formed a partnership with Cricket Canada in 2023 to monetize their full set of commercial rights – sponsorship, broadcast and merchandising.
In this week’s podcast we spoke to CEO Rahul Srinivasan, who’s a former Canadian youth international cricketer. But more importantly, he spent a few years in Canada’s professional rugby league solving similar problems.
Excited by the investment in cricket in the USA over the last few years, Srinivasan and his partners decided the same could be done for cricket in Canada.
Even though Boundaries North has only been active for 18 months, they’ve already put up some huge wins including major sponsorship deals for Cricket Canada with global brands such as Coke, TD Bank, Nissan, and A&W.
But they’re doing a lot more than just monetizing rights – they’re helping drive infrastructure and grassroots development across Canada.
It’s an exciting conversation where Rahul talks about the specifics of Boundaries North’s business model, the details of its playbook, and their collective vision for the future of cricket.
For anyone who cares about Associate Cricket, or is interested in creative ways to grow the sport everywhere, this episode is a must watch.
Transcript
Zee: All right, we’re here with Rahul Srinivasan who lives in his hometown and headquarters of Toronto, Mississauga specifically. Rahul, thank you so much for being on our podcast and joining us.
Rahul: Yeah, absolutely. This is my hometown, Mississauga. I’ve got my Tim Hortons coffee. There you go. So I’m in full form.
Zee: So let’s jump right into it.
So let’s talk about how you got into cricket to begin with. I understand you were a youth player. Tell me a bit about your cricketing career.
Rahul: Yeah, so I grew up here and cricket by far was not my first sport, not my second sport, not my third sport. Grew up like any second gen Canadian kid, gravitated towards hockey, baseball, soccer, basketball first. Played all of those sports fairly competitively at a rep level. And then it was actually the 2003 World Cup. I’d actually gone to Buffalo, New York, where my cousins were, and the India-Pakistan game was on. And it was that. It was that for me that was like, this sport is really cool. So the following summer, it was interesting because I saw an ad in my local Mississauga newspaper that was about a cricket camp at the Mississauga Ramblers. And I was like, okay, let’s just go and see what happens. And I guess I had some crossover skills with baseball because I played that at a high level. So I found it pretty seamless in terms of transitioning. So that was my introduction to the sport.
Zee: At what age?
Rahul: Probably 12 or 13. So in many ways, like sort of a late bloomer, right? And never thought of cricket as something like just, it was something that was in the periphery, right? I’d heard about it and then it was on TV. I had an uncle explain to me the rules and I’m like, this is really cool. And that was it, right? So that’s where my love for the sport started.
Zee: And so how far did you go as a player?
Rahul: So I mean, it was pretty, like my skills ramped up pretty quickly. When I was 15, I played for Canada Under-15s. What’s neat now, looking back, is a few of the guys on the team back then have gone on to play at the senior level. A couple of guys who are sort of on the fringe now, even a guy like Nitesh Kumar. He was an 11, 12-year-old prodigy playing with us, two, three years younger, right? So that was a really, really cool experience. I’d say that the disappointing part of it is kind of the pathway of a lot of Canadian cricketers is you play for the country, you get excited about it, and then you kind of get lost, right? So I’d say pretty quickly after I played for Canada, within two years, I kind of gave up on it. Playing it competitively, didn’t see a pathway, didn’t have the resources available, coaching, facilities, and then kind of, you know, like a lot of Indian kids in Canada, focus on academics, right? So that was a bit of the unfortunate part towards the end. But I mean, in so many ways, and we’ll talk about it, I’m kind of in a position now to try to fix that.
Zee: Sure. Like lots of Desi kids all over the world focusing on academics. We’re both in that background, so we can say that. So fast forward. You went to university, you started working, and you ended up working in rugby. So talk to me about that journey and that time spent working rugby, what you were doing.
Rahul: So even before rugby stuff, I spent about eight years in the customer loyalty industry. So I went to a business focused school in London, Ontario, a couple hours here from Toronto. Worked in customer loyalty, always wanted to try marketing strategy, brand management out. And I kind of grew up from a commercial development, professional development perspective there, working with big brands, big banks. A lot of it was focused on credit cards. So I got a lot of my skills in terms of how to work with brands, how to create business cases, how to sell there. And then it was right before COVID when I wasn’t really actively looking for a career change. Caught up with an old friend who I’d gone to middle school with and played cricket with.
Zee: Nice.
Rahul: And he was involved with this new pro rugby team coming to Canada. He had always known that I was a sports buff, and I still am, and I was while working in customer loyalty. And always thought, maybe I’ll try something in sport, but he was like, they’re looking for somebody to build their commercial strategy. And so I kind of just jumped at it and tried it. Now, it was pretty bad timing because literally within six months of me giving up my career in customer loyalty in this new thing, Canadian rugby, COVID hit. And it was sort of baptism by fire because the first year we were the only Canadian team, the border was closed. So I had to figure out a commercial playbook for a new to Canada rugby team playing in a North American league, playing games out of Atlanta. So that was tough. But in so many ways, I looked back on it and it was a great learning experience. So it kind of happened by osmosis. I wasn’t looking to get into the sports world. Cool opportunity came up, I met some good people, super passionate people, and then went right at it.
Zee: And so you were there for how long?
Rahul: I was there for about three years. And we did a lot of cool things there. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy starting something from the ground up. Now looking back on it compared to cricket, probably a lower ceiling in terms of the market size as well. But we still managed post-COVID or shortly after COVID, a couple of years after it. We put on eight to 10 home games in Toronto at York University. We had 1,000 to 3,000 people coming each weekend. Our games were broadcast nationally on TSN. We brought in big sponsors like a Honda. We were the first team in the league to have a betting sponsor. We had Puma giving our players boots. We did a lot of good stuff. But it was a grind. It was a grind. That certainly positioned me well to take on cricket.
Zee: Right. Okay. But now we’re getting into the meat of the main event, right? You decide at some point to start something that ends up being called Boundaries North, right? So take me through, you were still at the Arrows and you must have had some idea or some vision. So how did you get, how did this all occur to you? Right? Sounds like a culmination of a lot of things that are coming together from your past and what you’re working on and then how you made the move and how you got started. And then also, like, okay, what’s the big vision here? What is Boundaries North?
Rahul: So how this all came together, I mean, even though I stopped playing at 16, 17 years old, my love for the sport never went away. I always continued to watch it. I went to Lords, I went to Cape Town, and saw Test Cricket. I always had a big passion for it. So at the Arrows, the same guy, Srin Sridharan, who’s my business partner now at Boundaries North, was involved with the team, the rugby team. Me, him and the owner had always talked about, you know, maybe looking beyond rugby.
Zee: Is that how the two of you met, by the way?
Rahul: We went to middle school.
Zee: Okay. Did he play cricket too with you back then?
Rahul: Yes. After I had given up sort of my competitive aspirations, I played for his team and had a lot of fun, scored a lot of runs, put it that way. And then that was it. So we had always thought that we wanted to do something in Canadian sport more broadly than rugby, because even from a pure investment thesis, we saw a bigger opportunity and actually the need to scale up and to look at bigger opportunities. So I’d say 2021, 2022, we started looking at other things. One of them that was obvious was cricket. I think one of the big things we noticed was the investment in the States being made, right? We saw these things, Minor League Cricket, we heard about Major League Cricket, we heard about, you know, IPL teams and Australian Cricket boards coming on board, we heard about a stadium being built in Dallas and we got excited because we saw, well, there’s a lot of similarities in the market. We see Canada, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton being just as good markets. And we said, we got to do something here. So, you know, once we kind of had that, you know, realization, epiphany, we picked up the phone and called Cricket Canada and said, hey, let’s meet. At the time, the president was Raspal Badjwa. Sure. The GM, Ingleton Liburd. Yeah.
Zee: Who’s still there.
Rahul: Who’s still there? Right. And we started talking to them for two years to figure out how this thing could work. I think they saw what we were doing in Canadian rugby and said, hey, like, you know, there’s, you’ve been able to drive investment into a sport that has struggled to generate investment in the past. And that’s what Canadian cricket needs. That was the first step. And it was very step by step. Let’s crawl before we can walk, before we can run here. And now we’re running. Now we’re sprinting. We were walking, right? It took two years. So we spent two years just chatting with them and the board to figure out how this thing could work. And we tested some things. Some things worked. Some things didn’t work. But I’d say the culminating point was actually getting to an agreement with Cricket Canada that was, you know, what gave birth to Boundaries North. Sure. That was early 2023. So we’ve been.
Zee: So not that long ago.
Rahul: Not that long ago. So it’s been, what, maybe a year and a half.
Zee: 18 months. Yeah.
Rahul: That’s about it. Yeah. So, you know, struck a deal with them. We signed the commercial rights for the men’s and women’s national teams. I’d say more importantly, we became their true commercial partner with sort of an ambition and motivation from both sides on building the sport together. So that was the first step. Hasn’t been that long. I think we’ve accomplished a heck of a lot since then.
Zee: Yeah. We’ll get into all that for sure.
Rahul: But yeah, it was one of those things where it started with an exploration. It started with a phone call. It started with open minded people. It started with proving it in other places. In other ventures in the past. And now here we are.
Zee: So before we get into what you’re doing, right, and all the great things you’ve done in the past 18 months and starting, so just stepping back, because I want to sort of dwell on this for a second, because what you’re doing is so unique in the cricket world, right? In the associate cricket world, I don’t see another model like this being implemented. So the first obvious question that is asked by anyone looking at this situation, I sure must have come up in your conversations with them, is why shouldn’t Cricket Canada be doing this? Why doesn’t Cricket Canada do this? Why aren’t you, why don’t you just come in house and do it? Was that ever part of the conversation? If so, how did it go? If not, why?
Rahul: I think Cricket Canada has always wanted to take a bigger shot at the commercial elements of their business. I think they’ve always, that has always been a motivation, and there’s been some elements of success, right? There’s been international teams who have toured in the last 15, 20 years without stadiums. There have been sponsors here, there have been banks who’ve come on board. Those are all things done by Cricket Canada. I think, you know, where sort of the beauty in this relationship is, is that they have recognized that, you know, they’re really good at some things. And some things are just out of capacity, right? I can even talk about, you know, in terms of the support Cricket Canada gets at the Sport Canada level, Cricket Canada is the second lowest funded sport in all of Canada by Sport Canada. So, it’s very difficult to do a lot of things on a $100,000 budget. Still? Yeah. Wow. So, I think there was an acknowledgment that, you know, we can’t do everything really, really, really well. We can focus on governing the sport, player pipelines, developing talent, getting the national team ready, and the results are there. Getting ODI status, qualifying for the World Cup, those are really good accomplishments. But there’s only so many hours in a day to take those. Talk to sponsors, talk to broadcasters, talk to cities about building stadiums. So, I think so much of it was a recognition and acknowledgment of capacity. I’d say the other part of it was, here’s a group here who’s done something well in our category of sport. They seem to understand that it takes a different mindset and, quite frankly, a different model, a different approach. And I think that there was a lot of respect earned by what we’ve done in the past, what we’ve done in rugby in terms of, you know, selling tickets, selling merchandise, getting on TSN. And to their credit, they were willing to take a shot on us, right? The same way that we saw an amazing opportunity in Canadian cricket, they took a bet on us and I think we’re off to a good start. But I think it’s just a recognition of, you know, everyone’s not good at everything, right? And if we can work on this, you know, as a team, as a true partnership, then good things can happen.
Zee: So, did you – was part of it that you came to the table with money for the rights up front? Did you raise that beforehand? Like, how did that –
Rahul: Yeah. I mean, it all happened pretty quickly, right? I mean, one recognition or one observation we made is that looking at it from a global perspective, there’s no shortage of interested investment in North American cricket. Correct. Right? We always believe that, you know, if there are assets acquired or built, the investment will come. So, we’ve acquired those rights. We’ve structured a deal that I think really works for both parties. Both parties share in the upside. It’s a long-term deal. Yeah.
Zee:But there was an upfront payment on your part.
Rahul: Yeah. I mean, there’s annual payments. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And what we’re happy about is both parties are, like, beginning to see the progress immediately. Yeah. Right? From our perspective, right, you know, we’re paying. We’ve acquired these rights. We see the potential that, you know, one day there will be a return, right? On their side, what I think Cricket Canada feels really happy about is we’ve, you know, we’ve worked – we’ve created a partnership with this group, and they’re not just sitting there. They’re selling every day. Yeah. They’re building. They’re after it, right? They’re building partners. So we’ve taken on a lot of risk in that as well because this hasn’t – to your point, this hasn’t really been done before, right, in Cricket? Yeah. And we know associate cricket can be messy and difficult and challenging and underfunded. But again, I think it’s been a good year and a half. And what I’m most excited about is if this has been a good year and a half and we haven’t built much infrastructure, we haven’t – we’re still building the foundations, what does it look like three, five, seven, ten years from now? Yeah. Right? That’s when I really began to get excited about what this whole sport in Canada could look like.
Zee: Did you – you know, just to dig into this a little further, presumably you had to raise money from investors or someone, right, at the outset, right? And there was probably some sort of chicken and egg thing, like you don’t have the rights here from Cricket Canada, but you need to get investors to commit to it. You probably didn’t have X million dollars in your pocket after, like, you know, your arrows, like, stint. How did you go about that? Like, how did you line up investor interest or investor participation, right, before Cricket Canada committed to it or had they said, okay, we’ll commit to it so you can go get investors? How did that work?
Rahul: Yeah. I think, you know, even outside of sport, what we’ve been fortunate about, and I think, again, we’ve earned that, is the group of folks involved with Boundaries North. We have, you know, a strong backing locally here, right? We’ve got a number of projects, we’re co-invested in across a number of different industries. This isn’t our first investment, right? It’s certainly not our first. We’ve got folks who understand that they are working with high-caliber professionals who know what they’re doing, who understand the sport, who have first-hand experience playing it. And that was done intentionally to keep it very tight, right? We wanted to keep it tight. We wanted to raise capital from people that we knew, we trusted, they trusted us. We could explain to them the risks involved. So we did that in a way where we worked with a lot of, you know, similar people within our family offices instead of, you know, looking at traditional sports investors, for example. Yeah.
But it was risky. It was, hey, you got to put money in, and I, Rahul, am going to try to go sell some sponsorships, and if I don’t bring home the bacon, we still have a commitment to Cricket Canada of a certain minimum amount.
Zee: That’s exactly it. And there is a lot of risk, right? Yeah. And we knew the right way to categorize it. We knew that there was an equal risk. We knew that there was this upside. We knew that there was this potential to be realized, right? If I think about, like, where the true motivation was, was, forget about cricket, let’s look at immigration. Let’s look at demographics in Canada. Hello. Like any… Right.
My family came to North America in the 60s as well, so, like, you know, I’ve seen it, right? I was even chatting with some family this weekend, and they said, like, going from, like, the only Indian South Asian student in my class to being, like, one of a whole bunch, right?
I mean, okay, so on this point, I just have to get this off my chest. I, you know, I live in New York now, but again, I’m a child of the mid-70s in Canada, back in that era, and I look around, like, Mississauga. I was going out to dinner last night, and I was like, wait, I am either in Lahore or I am in Mumbai. Those are the two possible places I am right now. I’m not in Toronto. It’s like, there are entire pockets of South Asian society here, and they’re all obsessed with, you know, two things, food and cricket, right?
Rahul: Yeah, and Bollywood. That’s right. Yeah, three. And local. And both. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s what I’m excited about, right? If we’ve been in different businesses, right? Sure. I mean, I was focused on looking at databases of high potential segments and customer loyalty. Well, here’s one real hype, high potential segment, right? Because we know that the affinity for the sport is there. We know that the numbers are there. I was actually, you know, this morning putting together a pitch for a sponsor and just looking geographically because they’re, you know, looking to map out customers to their local outlets and all these things. And if you look at a place like Brampton, it’s over 50% South Asian, right? Even in places that people don’t think of traditionally, like Saskatchewan or Alberta, or even in some parts of Quebec, you’ve got these pockets where it’s 10, 15% South Asian. I think there’s a stat from StatsCan that was saying by 2035 or 2040 that over 10% of Canada is going to be South Asian, right? And that’s not slowing down. So I mean, this is where, like, again, if you look at it agnostic of cricket, that there’s this market, there’s this passion for this game. I think I’ve told you this, I’m an NFL season ticket holder, right? And so I see the passion that has, like, the most success in North American sports. And the only, you know, fan league sort of passion I can equate that to is cricket, right? You see it, right? When you see people, like, it’s literally, you know, happiness or agony on, you know, one game here and there, right? Every few years. That’s obviously ramped up with the IPL and local fandom has started. So when you have, like, a population of that size that’s growing that cares so much about one thing, right? You’re willing to take that risk, for sure.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that makes sense, right? It’s – the business case is pretty straightforward and very compelling. It’s almost like – I’m using a metaphor from the wrong sport, but it’s like a layup, right? In some ways, right? In some ways, right? Right. I don’t know what the cricket equivalent would be of a layup. I don’t know. There’s nothing that’s that – There’s nothing that’s that easy. That’s easy in cricket, right? Yeah. So, okay. So you’ve lined up your investors.
Part of it is the commercial rights. Part of it is the sponsorships and what you’re going to do with that. But there’s a broader kind of remit here, right? And so talk to me about all that. Sponsorships, you’re supposed to get sponsorships, but also you’ve got involvement in developing infrastructure and grassroots and merchandise. So what are the – before getting into the specific kind of campaigns or advertiser sponsors you’ve lined up, which I want to get into all of them, so what’s the broad relationship here with Cricket Canada?
Well, I would say that for both parties, for these commercial rights to truly be really valuable, you have to build a lot of stuff, right? It’s – we – sponsorship rights, broadcast rights, all these things become –
Zee: You do broadcast as well?
Rahul: Right. So we own the broadcast rights. And the sponsorship rights. Yeah. And merchandising rights. And we’ve got some ability to do some marketing, we’ve got all the ability to activate our sponsors.
Zee: Just – sorry. I’ll dig into that. So it’s the broadcast rights for what specifically? The Canadian national team?
Rahul: The Canadian national team. So obviously everything that’s outside of ICC properties. So right now, for example, the Pathways events, Cricket World Cup, too, is ICC-owned and operated. Sure. You know, they’ve sold it to a global broadcaster. Yep, yep, yep. But when we talk about bilateral cricket played in Canada, we own those broadcast rights. Yeah. And quite frankly, we want to put on a good show even though we don’t have a stadium just yet. Right. Right? So we’ve owned – we own all these rights. Yeah. But then to your part, it’s – and I always explain this to a lot of people I ask. You know, if we own the commercial rights for the Toronto Raptors or the NBA, then you’re a commercial agency. Yep, yep. But right now, right, there’s so much work to do in the sport to make these broadcast rights and these marketing rights and these sponsorship rights really lucrative for all parties. Sure. So that’s where a lot of the work comes in. Right? It’s not simply about just selling a product. It’s actually about building a product. Yep. Right? And then trying to build and sell all at the same time. Yeah.
Fly the – really change the engine on the airplane while you’re flying it.
And so like the way that we think about Canadian cricket, we explain it to everybody in this triangle analogy where you’ve got fans, players, infrastructure. So the fans, there’s plenty of them. We’re not worried about the number of fans like I said before, right? We’re not – that part of the triangle is very, very healthy. A ton of passion, big numbers, all that. When it comes to the players, a lot of players and, you know, one of the reasons again why I was keen on this investment was because I know the players are talented. It’s not an issue of player talent. Clearly. Right? Yeah. Maybe that’s me being sort of an untrained eye and saying that, you know, sort of informally. But I see it. I see the talent in front of me. Right? Now I’ve been in sports where you can see athletes in front of you. So there’s a lot of players, super talented, but really fragmented the whole ecosystem. I think the easiest way to, you know, look at that problem is you ask a young Canadian cricket player and say, how do I make this a profession? They don’t know. And it’s not their fault. They don’t know because the pathway hasn’t been built. The professional opportunities have not been built. The funding opportunities haven’t been built.
Sure. The leagues, the competitive structure hasn’t been aligned. No one really knows where exactly to look for talent. All these things. So there’s a lot of work that we do in terms of Cricket Canada in really strengthening that whole player development ecosystem. And then finally is infrastructure. I think this is actually the key to getting to, let’s call it maturity in terms of making cricket a top five sport in this country. And if you think about infrastructure, can I think of it again, as sort of layered. At the bottom layer, it’s just about numbers, right? We just don’t have enough cricket facilities in this country, right? The leagues are not accepting new teams because they don’t have enough pitches. You got to construct those, you got to build them, you got to convert other fields into it. So there’s not enough.
There’s not enough facilities. Yeah. You know, when, of course, our winter here in Canada, right? We play cricket for seven months of the year indoors. Certainly not enough indoor facilities. So these things are overbooked, right? So there’s sort of like a quantity problem to fix there. Then if we go up the ladder from a quality perspective, you have a lot of cricket on AstroTurf. You have a lot of cricket on grass that’s not cut short enough. You have a lot of cricket without side screens, right? So there is certainly a good number of cricket pitches in Canada and they’re growing across Canada, even in places where people don’t think they are, they need to be leveled up the same way that, you know, we have good Xandlings for our ice rinks while we need good pitches for our cricket players, right?
Yeah. Now, I’m going to hold that, not hold that, but like dig in on that because this is so critical and even in the U.S. it’s such a massive issue, right, because I hear the same thing in America. I see the same thing in America. There aren’t enough pitches. There aren’t enough facilities. Kids playing on AstroTurf, right? And the quality is not what it should be. With all the sort of potential, right, let’s dig into why that’s the case, right, that there isn’t enough quality or quantity and also like, and this is going to be part of the answer, what it takes to develop, right, or to build or to create a world-class cricket facility to create and maintain and why the economics of that have been so challenging and such that it hasn’t happened yet.
Zee: Right. I’d say, you know, the first question just from a quantity perspective, it’s a weird field. It’s a weird game, right?
Rahul: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not rectangular. It takes this thing in the middle that’s so important.
Zee: You can’t convert other fields.
And if you don’t know the game, it’ll take a lot of convincing to explain the difference between playing on turf and AstroTurf or Matting, right? So it’s just not logical, right? It’s an oval. It’s difficult to convert. A lot of other sports like in rugby, for example, can share a soccer field to paint the lines differently.
Rahul: That’s right. American football or Canadian football, whatever, right? You can use the same space for a lot of different things, whereas in cricket, you can use a very weird space for only one thing, right? So I understand. It’s kind of difficult to pass those things through city council, this, that, and the other. Now I think that there’s so much demand that that’s now becoming a more positive sort of conversation with the government.
I’d say, you know, when it comes to maintenance and being really elite-ready, not even elite-ready, but what a cricket pitch in a mature cricket market like the UK looks like, I think one of the skills gaps is with parks and recreations groups and training their staff to cut the grass low, but doing it in a way that it doesn’t burn, right? How do you, if you have a turf wicket, how do you roll it the right way? If you’ve got a public facility, how do you make sure that it’s, you know, I’m not taking my dog out and he’s running all over the turf pitch, right? Because he’s done that, right? And I was kind of like, hey, you can’t do that, right? But I’m sure a lot of people don’t even like to think about it and it’s not their fault because they don’t know, right?
So there’s like a skills gap even in the people who are building these things up at lightning speed because they want to keep up with the demand of like, okay, how do we actually like, you know, curate this, right? The same way you’ve got a specialized person to drive the Zamboni, right? And then, you know, in terms of like when we scale up as we keep going up the pyramid in terms of a true world-class facility, that obviously takes a lot of stakeholders to come on board, but how do we make that a winning proposition?
Well, it comes back to developing our talent, right? Sure. If you build a world-class facility with a team that cannot compete on the world-class scale, then who’s playing in that stadium? And then that becomes a challenging equation, right? So we think of it as a triangle because everything is linked together, right? This actually goes back to like what we learned in the Canadian rugby world that it’s all about alignment.
Rahul: One of the biggest things that the Toronto Arrows did was they created academies at the high school level, the university level, which was sort of the top tier of Canadian rugby. That’s where they scouted their players. They brought them into a pro system. They developed them. Half of them went on to play for the national team. The captain of the national team was the captain of the team. Coaches were shared. It was one aligned ecosystem that was a big priority, and it really, really created benefits both commercially and from the player development side.
That’s an approach we want to bring to Canadian cricket where you don’t look at these things as just a stadium or just a national team or just a sponsorship deal. They have to be connected, otherwise we will struggle.
Zee: Got it. So alignment is critical.
Rahul: Alignment is absolutely critical.
But rewinding a little bit, so in crude terms, very crude terms, and I know this is a nuanced question with a nuanced answer. How much does it cost to A, build, B, maintain? Not an elite level. We’re not talking about MCG, right? Okay, let’s leave that aside. But a turf cricket ground that is good enough for like a national youth team to play on or practice on.
Right. You know, when you look at installation plus like one-time installation in the first year with maintenance, probably $100,000 to get a really, really good facility, like to have it in a best case scenario, and I think that number is quite high in Canada because of our climate.
Zee: Sure. That’s $100,000 up front. And then to maintain annually?
Rahul: $30,000, $40,000, depending on the skills that we can bring in terms of, and we can get really clever there in terms of bringing people from other parts of the world on sort of, you know, work kind of things for a few months here and there in our Canadian summer, but it’s still, it’s an investment. It’s $30,000, $40,000 a year to keep it where it needs to be.
So it’s an investment, but that doesn’t sound, I’m not Bill Gates, right? I’m not Jeff Bezos, but that doesn’t sound like that much.
Yeah. And what we’re trying to do, I mean, so much of where we spend our time is knocking on the doors of different city halls across the country to say, let’s come up together with like a cricket parks and rec package where you deploy a whole bunch of these things, because we know that you’re feeling the pressure to build more. If we’re going to build them, let’s do them the right way, right? Let’s not try to sandwich them into some other project where you’re all of a sudden competing with different sports or you build, or you spend the money for a turf wicket, but you don’t build the fence. And then what’s the point? Because the thing doesn’t play well. Right. So, you know, we push them there on all these packages, which are in figures, you know, that we’ve talked about. I think the next step up is like, okay, we think the market actually is there for multiple stadiums, right? Yeah. The be all and end all is a, you know, flagship stadium, 20,000 people. We think it’s going to come. We think we know that there’s people in this country who are in governments who are really leaning in on Brampton city of Brampton and Patrick Brown talked about it on the broadcast of GT 20. That’s a project we’re really excited about.
We’ve been advocating for the national teams to have a role in that stadium. But in that sort of in-between tier, we actually think that there’s a market for maybe three to four stadiums across the country that are 2000, 3000 Cedar stadiums with really exceptional facilities, but that are just as accessible for the community.
So just rewind the hundred thousand figure that’s for a stadium, not, not a state that’s without seating, without whatever, that’s just a ground for kids to practice on.
Well, I’d say, I mean, like, you know, we want to be ideal. We want everyone to play on these amazing turf wickets, you know, there’s probably, you probably need five, really five of those in a market like Toronto, right. And have your elite level cricket player. But then you need some more investment into, you know, sort of the everyday grounds just to maybe keep the grass low and it’s on AstroTurf. That’s fine too. And I’ve heard from, you know, folks in Australia and England to say like, junior cricket should be on AstroTurf. Why should we be worried about maintenance for something that the outfield should be on? I mean, the infield, the outfield.
Yeah, but let’s not invest tons of money into the AstroTurf.
But the pitches, the wicket is still like, that’s not AstroTurf.
No. So their whole perspective is yes, the be-all and end-all is AstroTurf. I’ve been hearing in Australia, all the kids want to play on AstroTurf, but.
Zee: On AstroTurf?
Rahul: Oh, sorry. Natural turf. Natural turf. Yeah, sorry. But that’s expensive, right? And you may not need that at the absolute, like, most junior level. You’re still talking about fundamental skills, all that stuff. So we should be realistic about where these go. But in these big concentrated markets, yeah, like five really good turf pitches. In Toronto, I think it would make a lot of difference.
Zee: And how many are there now? That is at that level that I like.
Rahul: In terms of being absolutely up to spec, the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club got a really good one, but that’s a different model. That’s a private member’s club right there. That’s a privately owned facility. Yeah. You know, King City’s had a lot of turf wickets, but you know, I think, you know, when I look up there, it’s, it’s tough. It’s tough to maintain, right? Because again, it’s privately owned. Cities aren’t investing in it. I’d say Brampton’s been doing a really, really good job of building these and prioritizing and continuing to plan for them. But I think where they would want support is like, how do we get a good curator in here? Yeah. Make sure they’ve built grounds with cricket scoreboards and floodlights and two, three turf strips. But those two, three turf strips are sort of like out in the open. So anybody can run on it. Right. And then they’ve got heavy rollers, which is great. But how do we round out that capacity and then have five of them? Yeah. Right. It’s sort of, I think, where we need to go, especially from a talent development perspective. But I’d say, you know, not more or less important, just getting places for kids to play cricket is so important. The other day I was in a community park, I was walking by and there were four floodlit soccer fields. None were being used. And there were two state-of-the-art baseball dimes. And I know what those look like because I played really competitive baseball. One was being used and there was a new pickleball facility. There’s basketball courts, there’s beach volleyball. And then there’s these gazebos where people have these like, you know, family gatherings. And I see tape ball cricket being played, sandwiched into two gazebos. You can only hit the ball one way. And I’m like, there’s something wrong with this. Right. And I know that local governments, city governments, whether it’s local or big, even the City of Toronto has got a big project to convert baseball diamonds into cricket pitches. They’re trying. But you kind of have to attack it at sort of both ends. And we even have to be realistic. You know, we’re the rights holders for the national team. We want them to have the best facilities, but it can’t just be them. We still need more places to play, period.
Yeah. Right. So that’s how you build participation. And that’s so fundamentally important in addition to the best players having the best facilities.
So that’s, it’s an uphill battle. There’s a lot of work to do, but it seems very possible.
Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I mean, I think that like sports is an uphill battle, right? Emerging sports are an uphill battle. We talk about, you know, public funding, it’s pretty low, right? It’s like 20, 30, 40 times less than some of the other sports in Canada that we wouldn’t even consider to be top five, six sports. So it’s a challenge, but at the same time, again, why we wanted to get involved was because these challenges can be overcome, right? There’s enough people who really want to see this thing, this sport succeeds. It’s just a matter of, you know, having people focused on it every single day, knocking on the doors, talking to people, talking to investors, talking to cities, all these different things. I’ve always said that it’s like a, it’s a when, not an if thing with cricket in Canada. I’ve got that much conviction that it’ll be there.
Growing population, a lot of dollars, a lot of votes.
Zee: So let’s move on to talk about some of the wins you’ve had, right? Because in the 18 month period that you’ve been sort of operating, you’ve really done some interesting things. You’ve had some huge wins. So let’s talk about some of the deals you’ve done, some of the commercial deals you’ve done, right? Because I’d love to hear more about them, right?
Rahul: I’d say like, you know, the commercial side where I want to give a lot of credit, gratitude and like, just to recognize their achievements is before we got involved, the team has been on an upward trajectory for quite some time. The Canadian men’s and women’s, especially with the men’s, yeah, women’s cricket, there’s a lot of work to be done.
The men’s team, I mean, if you think about it, we talked about limited funding. This is a team on limited funding that’s got back their ODI status that has qualified for a World Cup that has beaten a full member nation, right? I want to just recognize that before we talk about the commercial agreements we’ve struck because without that performance, that story is more complicated. That story is not as immersive, I think, for the brands, right? They feel it. They feel it. They see this upward trajectory. They watch games. They’re learning the sport. They’re seeing this team win. So that first and foremost is a big accomplishment in itself.
When it comes to the commercial agreements we’ve had, I’d say five major sorts of deals that have come through.
- Coca-Cola was first.
- TD.
- A&W was third.
- Nissan was fourth.
- O’Neal’s, who outfitted Cricket Ireland for a decade, was in April.
So they were a big, big, big brand, big global sporting brand to come on board. And that’s why, you know, when we were saying earlier, like, we’re off to a good start here and it’s not just us who see the potential, right? And it’s interesting. In all of these different deals, everyone sees the potential for different reasons.
Zee: So let’s go through them. Talk about Coke. How did that deal get done and where does it come from?
Rahul: I mean, started a conversation, had a really receptive voice on the other side of the table. I think Coca-Cola looks at, you know, venues, infrastructure, and stadiums, and it’s a big part of their business, right? And they see, and we’ve been sharing with them the roadmap to grow the sport. So much of it is about stadiums. And I think that there’s a, you know, definite interest in saying, you know, when this thing really grows, we want to be the first, right? We are the first, right? We’ve got one major competitor here that, you know, does a lot of things in cricket globally. But let’s be the one who does it here in Canada.
So they’ve got, and again, alignment. Their alignment in many ways is about infrastructure. At the same time, they’ve got new drinks they’re bringing to Canada, like Body Armor. That’s all about athlete nutrition. There’s a logical fit there. They’re seeing new markets, like places like Brampton, Scarborough, Surrey, Edmonton, having big potential. Let’s get cricket branding into grocery stores, which is what they did during the World Cup. And that was really cool for us to walk into a grocery store and say, sip it with cricket. That’s really cool, right? Like, I couldn’t imagine, see, if I was not involved in cricket, I would be standing there taking pictures, sending it to my family, because they’re like, what? This is an amazing recognition from a big global brand that cricket is on the uprise.
So that’s Coke.
TD Bank.
Yeah. What I love about that one, I think it’s such a perfect fit, because it’s a Canadian company that is also a global company, right? And you’re coming to them with a great home demographic, and also a phenomenal global sort of demographic, right? So talk about how that happened.
TD Bank, yeah. I mean, I think that there’s such a compelling business case for them to support cricket, right? You think about it, we talked about the newcomers to Canada, right? You need a line of credit, bank account, credit card, mortgage. I mean, this is like what I used to talk about 10, 15 years ago, right? In credit card marketing. So I know that this is a high value segment, right? And they’ve also made the recognition that cricket is something that this customer segment truly cares about. I think they tried some things in cricket for the last couple of years, and then they saw this momentum and commercialization with the national team.
And I think, most importantly, they saw that there’s now a platform built for brands to tap into that, right? Everything that I talked about in terms of a high priority segment and these great things and this passion, a brand has to be able to tap into that. And what we’ve created is we’ve staffed up, we’ve got marketing agencies, we dedicate a lot of resources into marketing, created a platform for them to actually tell the story the right way. What I think the beauty of the TD partnership is, is their sponsorship, right? Again, I go back to a sport at maturity, commercial agency, it’s a different thing. What I love about TD is we work with them as true partners to build the sport together. They’re very keen on learning what’s coming next, what’s happening globally, what we should be looking at across the world in cricket. They’re truly invested in building the sport with us. And obviously that comes from a place where there’s a big market opportunity for us as a bank, but I love working with partners when they are after the same objectives that we are. So it’s a really, really tight knit partnership.
Nissan, I’d say, from a customer segment perspective, same type of thing, right? Big, everyone needs a car, right? Not everyone aspires to buy a car or lease a car, right? If we can intercept them at that right moment, at a game, on a broadcast, in social media, they see the hero wearing the Nissan logo on the jersey, maybe that’s a way to win some share.
You have no idea, even in this trip alone, how many immigrants, South Asian immigrants I’ve talked to, who are involved in the cricket I’ve been covering, who are students who are post-education and they don’t have cars, and I’m saving up to buy a car, and I need to buy a car, and they’re all cricket lovers. I was thinking about that the whole time, which is Nissan has got a great in there because you’re inserted in that car, you’re top of mind for them, because it’s not just a growing population from youth growing up, there’s a steady flow of immigrants at the university age, right? And so it’s just a great, great spot to be in for a car company.
And the way we work with the brands, we promote to them that your sponsorship with us can be very different, in a positive way, because of things like accessibility to players, working with a really agile group, it’s one thing to get Scotty Barnes or Austin Matthews booked six months before doing an appearance, Nissan, they’re doing an event for their new EV, and they called us up and said, all right, I think Harsh is around, Harsh, we asked him, would he be interested in doing this, he’s a big supporter, sees the bigger vision, and within a few days he was at a Nissan EV, big event, right? Just driving the car, being filmed in the car, created some content, and I think that’s a big thing that we bring to the brands, it’s just being very agile, right? We’re having this event, we want to market to this community, can your players come out, can you come out, can we do some digital media off the back of these events, all those things, that’s something we like to bring to the brands, to differentiate ourselves versus other sports properties.
So I want to talk about A&W because that is phenomenal, right, to get a fast food sponsor and A&W. First of all, the food’s very popular, but how did that happen?
Yeah, again, just like conversation with the really open-minded person on the other side of the table. What I love about A&W is they are taking this newcomer South Asian segment to heart and literally changing their menu, right? They’re creating new menu items that are, you know, masala veggie burgers, they’re advertising them. I’ve heard that they advertised it and went through their stock so quickly that they had to calm down on the advertising because they were out of veggie burgers, right? And that’s a big, big win, big success. And so I love working with them because they understand the market just like we do in terms of if you put the investment in, if you actually take steps to cater to this market, you will win them as customers, as fans.
So food and cricket, I mean, I think the interesting observation with food and cricket is unlike the U.K. or even Australia, we don’t have people going out to pubs and watching it. Sure. People are at home and order food. They certainly want to tap into that.
So I would say the cool thing with, you know, with the last one, O’Neill’s, O’Neill’s is really interesting because it’s a real cricket conversation. They saw Cricket Ireland go from associate to a full-member nation, a test-playing nation that’s hosting test cricket in Ireland. They’re like, we think Canada’s going to do that next, and that’s obviously our ambition is to get to full-member status. And that’s a whole separate conversation of how we get there, but that is the goal. And they said, maybe that’s a journey that we can embark on with another nation. The funny bit about that is we played Ireland in the World Cup and beat them. So we were the ones wearing O’Neill’s and beat them, right?
Zee: They bet on the right horse.
Rahul: So yeah, I mean, what’s been cool is that there’s no one singular reason any of these brands have tapped into cricket. I think that there’s a common denominator that this is a sport that’s growing really fast globally, and has massive potential in Canada. But for us, it’s all about creating a unique strategy for each of the different brands, being super agile, not going to them with a rate card and saying, hey, this is how much this costs. It’s more like, what do you think about the newcomer segment? What do you think about cricket? Here’s what we think. Let’s create a plan together and work as true partners.
So there’s one, not sponsorship, but partnership that we haven’t talked about yet that I really want to talk about is Raj, the Maharaja. Tell me how that came up and how you pulled that together. I mean, it seems awesome, right? It’s just such a great fit. So tell me about that one.
So that was an unsolicited message from Raj’s agent in the UK, his commercial agency that he’s working with.
Zee: Is it in the UK?
Rahul: It was in the UK. He knew cricket just by being in the UK. Raj himself is a big fan of cricket. He’s met Sachin. He got pictures with Sachin, which is really cool.
Zee: Raj is Canadian, right? He’s from Calgary.
Rahul: Yeah, he’s from Alberta.
Zee: Oh, is he from Calgary or is he from Edmonton? I’m not sure. I’ll have to go look it up.
Rahul: Yeah, I’ll have to go look it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what I loved about it was another really willing partner on the other side of the table to feel like, hey, I live in Tampa. You guys are playing up in Fort Lauderdale against India. Let’s just do something. Let’s come through. And that’s the approach that we take, right? It’s like, okay, let’s put all formalities aside in terms of how typical brand or influencer deals get done. It’s like, you love cricket. We love cricket. Let’s come up with something. Let’s get you some jerseys. Let’s meet the players. Let’s make sure you’re at the game. And it was a pretty fun, successful type thing. I mean, I was lucky. There’s a gentleman, Jimmy, who works with Cricket Canada. He’s historically done a lot of their marketing, still does. We work with him together collaboratively to build out this big marketing footprint. Just a diehard wrestling fan. And I was like, hey, Jimmy, guess who reached out to me? And I was like, I’m going to ask you to kind of lead this conversation and speak the same language because I don’t know anything about this space. And it was just a great example of two people with a lot in common coming to a really cool sort of initiative. Unfortunately, that game was rained out down in Florida, but this was kind of sort of the highlight for us commercially was that we had this mega superstar in the wrestling world who was really trying to tie his Indian roots to Canada through cricket, something that he also loves, something that’s new, something that he sees on the rise. But really, it was just a few conversations. Let’s get creative, let’s be entrepreneurial, throw some paint at the wall, see what sticks type thing. And it came out to be this really authentic sort of piece of content. And hopefully we’ll do more of them.
Zee: So he met with the players. How did that go?
Rahul: Well, some of them are diehard wrestling fans.
Zee: Oh, really? Are you kidding me?
Rahul: I mean, he’s a big, strong human being. He is. What we would have loved to do, and maybe this is something that we will do from a content, get him out to a training session. Let’s try some power hitting and see what happens, right? I’m sure he would really enjoy that. I’m sure our players would really enjoy that. But that’s sort of what we can offer to brands, right? This is difficult to do in fully commercialized, professionalized sports. We try to take a different approach to it to say, let’s find people that really are interested in tapping into it. But the players, yeah, they were like, this is really cool because this is somebody that we’ve looked up to for a long time in terms of sports entertainment. And to see his interest in them, I think, is equally gratifying for the players. And that’s a really, really cool thing that’s going on with this playing group.
Zee: Very cool. So last couple of questions, Raul, you’ve been really generous with your time. One is, let’s talk a bit about merchandise because one thing that you took over as part of your relationship with Cricket Canada is the merchandise, right? The national team merchandise. And I think a lot of associate nations are notoriously neglectful of that area, partly because like we said at the beginning, there’s limited bandwidth and there’s so much more money and rights and whatever. So merchandise often sort of gets relegated. What have you done with merch? You’ve done some very cool campaigns with Cricket Canada merch. So talk to me about how you went about it, how you thought about the challenge and how you tackled it and what you’ve done.
Rahul: Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I think it’s like me as a sports fan. When you fall in love with a new team, the first thing you want to do is have their jersey, right? Like that, I’ve experienced that as a sports fan. I think that’s so important for me to feel part of the whole thing. So when we were building and leading up to the World Cup, we made it absolutely non-negotiable that fans have to be able to purchase merchandise. So we worked with O’Neal’s and this is part of why we see them as a, or when we were chatting with them as a real compelling partner, because they had those capabilities in e-commerce. So we worked with them, designed a really cool jersey, based it off of things that had happened in Canadian hockey. We tried to make it about something, right? It’s one thing to just design a jersey. It’s another thing to try to tell a story and that’s not easy to do through a jersey, but we tried, right? And I think it looked pretty good. Some people are always going to like your jersey. Some people are going to hate it. That’s merchandising for you. So I designed a cool jersey, put it on sale, and saw some good results. When I was watching the broadcast back of some of the games we played, I saw a lot of fans in those jerseys that had clearly gone on to O’Neal’s online store and bought them. So it was really cool. I see the value there, less of a dollar and cents value. It’s more about like, how do you strengthen the connection between Canadian cricket fans and their national team, which is really important because we know that Canadian cricket fans, Canada is not their team, their first team, right? And I don’t think we need to change that overnight. I’d rather celebrate them supporting many teams and celebrating their cultural ties back home. But you need something, right? You need something to show off, right, if you’re saying that you support Canada. And so we really made it a priority to be able to sell jerseys. I’d say this is just a start. We’d love to get more creative, again, so many hours in a day to design really cool merchandise and sell it the right way and promote it and get influencers on board. The typical sort of playbook there, but again, it’s been a good start and it’s something that hadn’t been done before, right? And that’s so important for us is to do things that have not been done before because we’re ambitious and we want to see this thing grow.
Zee: Very cool. So another area I want to ask about is, you know, we’ve talked a lot about the South Asian demographic, right? And no brainer, obviously, that’s going to be the core of, you know, what happens in Canada, what happens in the U.S. in terms of growing cricket, right? And South Asian is sort of the core demographic. You know, there’s other cricket playing backgrounds, right? There’s English Canadians, there’s Australian Canadians, the flow of immigration is not as high, but there’s some, there’s Caribbean Canadians. So talk to me a little bit about how much of the target demographic they comprise and what you’re doing to sort of reach them.
Yeah, I mean, the South Asian Caribbean population is sort of the first priority, right? Because they make up the biggest sort of clusters of newcomers to Canada that have allegiance with cricket. I’d say like the bigger, the bigger vision here is you start with, you lean into your strengths at the beginning, right? Sure. Which we know is a, you know, group, a community, South Asian people from the Caribbean who love the sport. But again, as we move towards maturity, a good marker for us will be if we’re able to create fandom among people who’ve got no connection to cricket.
And are you, what’s interesting is so much of this draws on your own experience in your own life. Yeah. And in your own life, you came to cricket late, right? You are a converted baseball, basketball, football, hockey fan, right? So you went through that experience. Now obviously you had the roots, you had the family connection, you had the like, you know, the motherland connection where it was easy for you to get into it, right? But you hadn’t gotten into it until the age of 12. Yeah. So what is it about your experience that’s going to help you do that?
Yeah. I’d say the key, I mean, first of all, the product, T20 Cricket is fun. Yeah. It’s exciting, right? It is objectively, I mean, put my, you know, fandom aside, I actually like watching Test Cricket.
I’m with you. I’m with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a tougher sell.
That’s my fun. Yeah. I get it. T20 Cricket is objectively super fun. Sure. It’s like, you know, baseball and I’m not trying to dump on baseball because I love baseball for different reasons. But you don’t see a homerun every 10 minutes.
Zee: You don’t see one in a game.
Rahul: Exactly. So it’s like an inherently fun sport with a lot of athleticism. Now the commercial side of it in terms of entertainment with music and fireworks and dancing and all these things have now made it very exciting. So the game’s really fun. It’s like, how do you now advertise that game? How do you get people to try it? And I think the key is going to be the experience, right? This is what we, you know, rugby was, you know, what we really worked on was converting non rugby fans into rugby fans. And it was all about experience. Like it was all about getting people to a location, putting on an experience that’s like some percentage of the sport, but some percentage just a good time. And maybe a percentage of those people will convert and fall in love with the sport. So I think we’ve got a really, really good product in a game that’s shorter and fun and all those things. Now it’s going to be, how do you create this like one touch point where somebody says, I want to come back a second time, a third time, a fourth time, a fifth time. I think that’s actually about an experience, right? So there’s all these things that we can do. We’ve got a good product. Game’s good. They’re going to see it. They’re going to see, you know, TD put our star players in banks on the outside, which is really cool. They’re going to see their cricketers in commercials. TD even put Cricket Canada’s logo on top of their tower during the World Cup. So they’re going to see that and be like, cricket, there’s something going on. But how do you convert them? I think that’s an experience question. I think it’s why I like going down to Dallas, you know, where we met and saw major league cricketers. It’s a fun experience. And you see, you know, I, I very intently look at the makeup of the fans there and it’s certainly, you know, predominantly South Asian. But you see a lot of people who say they don’t, like, I wouldn’t have thought this group is already this big. Yeah. Right. And that is probably because they’re coming. It’s on this curiosity factor. But there is now a product that’s exciting enough that they’re like, I want to come back a second time, a third time, a fourth time. So again, why so much of our focus is on infrastructure is to create these experiences. Yeah. I fundamentally believe that the way to quickly grow with non cricket people is to get them into a cricket game and a really good experience where they can enjoy themselves.
Zee: That’s huge. What, what’s the role you would say of, now I know GT20, the cricket tournament in Canada, the 20, T20 tournament in Canada is separate, right? It’s not owned, it’s not owned by Cricket Canada and you don’t sort of, you don’t work with them. It’s not owned by you. No. What role would you say they’re playing in the growth of cricket in Canada?
Rahul: I’d say investment in Canadian players has been really important. You see in the recently concluded version, Dilpreet Bhadra, the only batsman to score a hundred and just looking like the most comfortable batter on a really tricky pitch, right? Canadian. He’s Canadian. And you know, without GT20, maybe he doesn’t score a hundred against world-class bowlers. Last year it was Harsh who, you know, did really, really good things. So I think they are playing a role in investing in Canadian players and giving them the opportunity to play against elite talent in decent facilities.
Zee: Against that alongside.
Rahul: Yes. Yes, exactly. So, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re playing against real competition. But I think more importantly is I think the players begin to feel like professionals. Yeah. Right. This is a new experience for them. There’s crowds. This is broadcast globally. That means something to them. Right. And I think that’s an important sort of mental switch to go from, I’m a really good player representing Canada to, Hey, maybe this could be a profession if I do well, maybe the next league. Yeah. Coming and asking. I’m sure for, you know, some of these guys that I mentioned, I’m sure they’re getting calls and their agents are getting phone calls because of great performances in these leagues. So I’d say, you know, first and foremost, the investment into Canadian players is something that we really appreciate and see as a fundamental part of the equation here.
Zee: Very cool. So, you know, the last couple of questions. I always like asking people because, you know, the cricket world is a community. I’m going to break this into two parts. You’ve worked very closely with the national team, right? And I’m sure they’re all great guys. Right. Exclusion is not a knock on anyone, but, you know, mention a couple of the individuals you’ve worked with right on the team, you know, player wise, who’ve been really great to work with. It’s just really awesome people you really admire a lot for whatever reason. And why?
You know, I’ll name a few and for each one, tell me why, because it’s just good to get to know them this way.
Rahul: I’ve got to know Aaron Johnson. You know, pretty well had a good few chats with him and just learning about his journey to Canada and to Canadian cricket is a pretty remarkable one, because, you know, there’s one thing to come into the team with a Canadian passport, right? There’s another thing to actually come to spend the time that you need to spend to become eligible. His pathway to Canada is Jamaica to the UK to Fort McMurray. Fort McMurray is not a traditional sort of cricketing place and very cold. Right. Then to Vancouver. So like that takes commitment, right? That takes a lot of commitment and it’s not easy, right? It’s not easy. You know, you’re playing all sorts of cricket in all sorts of parts of the world. Then you land in Canada in places where the thriving cricket scene isn’t necessarily there, but then you go there. Right. So it just takes a lot of commitment on his side. And it was thrilling to see him score 50 against Pakistan that all these franchise leagues are ringing him off the phone because he’s deserved it. Right. And he’s truly deserved it. It’s not just a talent thing. I made a commitment. Kaleem Sana is a really great story in terms of being on the cusp of, you know, in that sort of elite level in Pakistan, playing Pakistan under 19, had some injuries, but stayed with it. Right. And sort of reinvigorated his career once he got to Canada and maybe said, okay, maybe cricket is something that I really want to have another crack at, despite a lot of physical injuries and like physical rehabilitation is not easy. Sure. So just from like, you know, being at the cusp and then having unfortunate injuries and then moving to another part of the world and picking it up again, again, takes a lot of courage.
Rahul: At Saad, Saad Bin Zafar, you know, he’s, he’s, he’s patched cricket together. Right. Like he’s, this tournament will pay this much, right. Like really, you know, like structuring it in a way that he can take on different opportunities, but like, again, having that commitment and like taking a bet that he could patch up all these different opportunities so that he can make cricket a career and now he’s been rewarded. Right. He’s gone to a world cup, all these different things. So there’s, there’s a lot of guys on the team who, you know, I admire for different reasons. I think some of them are like, it just takes a lot of grunt work to be a Canadian national cricket player. Right. Oftentimes it means like literally moving to another part of the world in the hopes that you will play for Canada. So there’s like a, you know, a commitment in sort of a different way where it’s them taking a bet on themselves and that’s not something that every person does. Right. So quite a few players for different reasons that I admire.
Zee: What about, same question, but for non-players in the cricket world, right? People in the industry you’ve worked with, whether in Canada or overseas, but I would imagine a lot of what you spend time in Canada, like who are some of the, you know, executives or people in the industry that you admire and why?
Rahul: Yeah, I mean, without, you know, speaking of a single person, it’s almost like you’ve got probably 10 of these types of people across the country who are true volunteers who show up and I’ve seen a number of them across the country show up, unbox uniforms. They’re often the president of the league or the president of their provincial unit or a board of director volunteers, right? But it is like giving a ton of time to see something succeed. It’s almost like, you know, it’s really strong actions from people who just want to see the sport succeed, all volunteerism and a lot of time committed. Right. And I would say that there’s probably one in every province across the country, right. And it’s no mistake that their stature in Canadian cricket continues to grow, whether it’s being on the Cricket Canada board, whether it’s president of a local league, whether it’s provincial, provincial president. My, my, my observation is all those positions of authority in Canadian cricket have been earned because of volunteerism, right? So it’s difficult to say this person does it better than that person, but it’s more like there’s a lot of these really, really well-intentioned volunteers who give up a lot of their lives for cricket.
Zee: That’s awesome to hear about. That makes me optimistic for the future of the sport in Canada, obviously, of course, because of what you’re doing as well. Thank you so much for the time you’ve shared with us today. Your story is remarkable. And what Boundaries North is doing is, like I said at the beginning, it’s very unique. I don’t know any other country where this model is in place. It’s a model that makes a lot of sense. And I wish you and your team and Cricket Canada all the success in the world with this.
Rahul: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Name of Author: Zee Zaidi
