Move over soccer and pickleball (especially you pickleball), the title of fastest-growing sport in Canada belongs to cricket.
Driving the news: The Global T20 Canada (GT20), an international cricket competition featuring several of the world’s biggest cricketing stars, wraps up in Brampton this weekend.
- The two-week tourney is expected to bring in 50,000 fans and 150 million (not a typo) international TV viewers.
Why it’s happening: Canada is a burgeoning cricket hot spot, with the number of cricket players in the country projected to double to more than 500,000 over ten years.
- Recent initiatives to grow the sport in Canada include a new investment group called Boundaries North and a planned Canadian expansion for Minor League Cricket.
Why it matters: Let’s take it back to Grade 9 civics. Canada is a cultural mosaic—a nation that prides itself on embracing multiculturalism. Cricket’s rising popularity exemplifies this, showing how a new demographic (in this case, South Asians) can shape our culture.
- Between 2015-2020, Canada welcomed 500,000 newcomers from countries where cricket is the national sport or has national representation—and the number is rising.
Bottom line: Just as immigration helped propel men’s soccer to new heights, it could make Canada a future cricketing contender.—QH