Desi Dialogues

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One of the best things that happened to my five-year-old son, Parshand, after he came back from India is that he started speaking in Guajarati, the language we speak in India.

The other good part was that he developed a great understanding of the game of cricket, which in India, as you may know by now, is equivalent to the euphoria generated by hockey in Canada.

His involvement has reached such a point that he now goes with his small bat and his big ball all around the house playing the game in his own small way, and has even roped his friends into the game, who I must say, have enthusiastically tried to understand it.

How to spin the ball and how to run in between wickets is now being taught to a whole set of people - his tiny friends - who have never held a cricket bat in their lives.

But Parshand's interest has been kindled because of his elder brother, Jahan, who plays the game competitively in his school and on local Toronto teams and whose involvement has increased even further with the introduction of the Indian Premier League.

A recent phenomenon in India, the Indian Premier League is just like the English Premier League wherein the best soccer players from around the world are inducted into several local leagues and who then compete domestically with one another.

What has added glamour, however, to the Indian side is that Bollywood super stars such as Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta have paid millions of dollars to own these teams. The excitement over this league has reached fever pitch as Indians here in Canada tune into the games, which have been on weekly during the last few months.

So now Jahan wears his Mumbai Indians T-shirt when cheering his team on from the family room, while Parshand cheers a different league.

On a different note, the big banks including Scotiabank have participated in the excitement of cricket by sponsoring matches locally.

On the Victoria Day weekend, the Scotiabank National T20 Cricket Championship at the Maple Leaf Cricket Club in King City was held. The long weekend saw eight teams across the country vie for the cup. The cup was won by the Ontario B team with the team from Quebec coming in second.

Scotiabank is also involved the regulating cricket, through Cricket Canada.

Hopefully, cricket will become bigger as more banks start sponsoring cricket in Canada. Cricket has been underfunded and languished here. However, the involvement and the increase of the South Asian influence in Toronto will, I think, motivate companies to put their sponsorship dollars in this game - that is if they want to connect with their South Asian consumers in a big way.