By Ravi Madholall in Toronto
President of the Kaisoca Ladies Cricket Club that recently won the 2016 Scarborough Cricket Association (SCA) George Maharaj has lashed out at Cricket Canada for not including members from the Association to feature in the ongoing limited-over matches against the touring Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) of England.
George Maharaj president of Kaisoca Ladies Cricket Club.
A Canada Select X1 are currently engaging with MCC in two 50-over matches while a combination of Canada and America ladies played against the tourists in two T20 games.
Touted as the CanAm team, they were beaten on both occasions on Wednesday at the Toronto Skating and Curling Club ground while the Canada Select X1 suffered another heavy defeat also at the same venue on Thursday.
After some handsome and impressive performances from the Ladies who participated in this year’s SCA T20 competition from the three teams, Kaisoca, Superstars and Rising Stars, Maharaj is very obdurate that many of these women could have earned national selection.
But he vehemently feels politics were involved to ignore the girls from the SCA for this special occasion against this high-profile cricket club from Europe.
“This [is] a shameful act by Cricket Canada stated that any player affiliated to the SCA, the only organisation to host a female division in Ontario, will not be eligible to play against MCC,” Maharaj lamented.
He continued to criticise the Country’s top cricketing body that it is vindictiveness and simultaneously the girls are “feeling” the consequence of not getting a huge opportunity like this to showcase their talents.
“Cricket Canada in a spiteful move then selected five players from Ontario who have not played in any women’s League for two consecutive years and imported 7 players from Western Canada whom I told cannot hold a bat at the cost of over $6, 000, total none-sense,” Maharaj expressed vociferously.
MCC team is boosted greatly with the inclusion of two accomplished and distinguished women players: Claire Taylor and Charlotte Edwards; both have been regular and seasoned campaigners for England senior side over the past eight successive years.
“With these two great players in the MCC lineup, and no selection from the SCA, we are in for a grave embarrassment; no wonder women’s cricket in Canada is in shambles with people like Ranjit Sani (Cricket Canada President) and his cronies involved at the highest level of cricket in Canada,” a disgruntled Maharaj commented.
According to the Canadian-based Trinidadian Maharaj, women cricket needs a lot of work and proper organisation and SCA has demonstrated that since its introduction to Ladies’ cricket last year.
“The SCA is the only organisation to devote time, energy and utilise prime grounds with washrooms designed for females in an effort to facilitate women cricket in this Province; this mess needs to be fixed now”! the cricket administrator spoke out.
Kaisoca first started to play at the Toronto and District Cricket Association in 2010 thanks to Maharaj’s input. Maharaj declared that International Cricket Council had contacted him to help improve the standard of women’s cricket in Canada.
The same year his team was formed and continued to make steady progress. Several players have come under his assistance one of them was Chuttell Martin, who scored a magnificent 81 in the SCA’s final that played against defending champion Superstars at Ashtonbee ground in Scarborough.
Maharaj also stated that an All-Stars between two teams from the three sides that competed this year will be playing on Sunday at Ashtonbee facility in a 35-over match.
The same day, a SCA team was scheduled to play the MCC team but Cricket Canada changed the fixture to have MCC taking on the Canada Select X1 at Maple Leaf ground in King City.
MCC began their tour of North America with three victories in the United States of America before journeyed across to neighboring Canada.
Efforts to contact Cricket Canada General Manager Islington Liburd for a comment on this scenario proved futile. It was told that Liburd is currently out of the country on personal matters.