Canada beats Australia by 42 runs

Plasmodium,what you say is true. With the seasons now overlapping and in some cases year round trees are forgetting when to be decidious and when to be evergreen.

Vinay, Brett and Michael - I was thinking back to when I was a kid when iI sai cricket was in a realative decline. Cricket used to be Australia's No.1 sport by a longshot. On sports day, half the kids brough their bats to school and at recess, everybody swapped stats for their favorite batsman/bowler. In winter, sure we played rugby league, but very few kids went to the big games or even had heroes even though this was the era of Clive Churchill, and the two flying wingers, Graves and Bliss. But the cricket gods, like Bradman, Miller, Barnes and Lindwall, were way above them - up there on Olympus. Re. lower level cricket - about 10 years back I went to a tourney at the old Toronto Cricket Club - a crowd of 3,000 tops mainly vociferous West Indians and thoughtful subcontinentals. Scotland made the semis so The Scotsman sent a reporter over on the next flight. The final between the Netherlands and Zimbabwe was full of furious bowling and boundary cover drives. The match was decided on a last ball miss-field. It was wonderfull exciting, and when I saw 3,000 people get to their feet and applaud both sides, I knew that cricket had a real future in Canada. And so it's proving.

I was speaking about the wider community but hey. But then I live in Tasmania where sporting knowledge and support goes as far as the AFL and cricket and not much else.

The USA lost last night to Italy by 51 runs http://www.cricinfo.com/wcldiv4/engine/current/match/467088.html

Adam,popular belief is no recommendation. Many Australian cricketers in the past played baseball as their winter sport. The narrow view of Australians and Americans that you refer to is perhaps not the "many" you ascribe it to.In fact if you read the Roar regularly you would have seen comments from avowed baseball fans and in one case a published baseball writer.

The more the merrier I say, if cricket can expand into Canada and/or the US it will open up some doors. This should be encouraged.

I can see why cricket could have some serious popularity. Being a Commonwealth nation it would seem to me that Canada has been adopting the Commonwealth sports quite readily. I assure everyone here however, that games such as baseball is not a version of cricket for idiots. Baseball for the most part is much more interesting a game than cricket and the skills are being adopted by cricket as we speak, the Australian fielding coach is from baseball thoroughbreed. Baseball, contrary to popular belief is a game of tactics, of course many Australians miss it because of our narrow view on sport (kind of the same narrow view America has on sport). Nothing harder than making solid contact in baseball/softball in my mind.

Dirk Nannes of the netherlands is a world class player, fastest delivery at the T20 world cup was his, great thing about cricket is although its a team sport one guy can really make a huge difference to the team performance on the whole,if they find a few more like him we'll have a game on our hands

I have often thought to myself that yanks would love cricket if only they could understand it, its a very complicated game and it can seem very dull and boring if you dont understand the stratagies and tactics, for cricket fans dot balls can be exciting but if you dont understand why a dot ball can be so important then it seems like nothing at all happened, just as if you dont understand that a batsmen has been forced to block because the delivery was good it seems like nothing happens. But american sports have many similarities with cricket. baseball and grid iron both take a long time to play and yanks seem to love disecting their sports with endless statistics, they love their statistics and cricket is jam packed with meaingful statistics. Baseball to me is a version of cricket for idiots. you stand and swing, miss 3 times and your out. hit the ball and you run regardless of where the ball goes. Cricket has many different strokes and endless variations of shots to choose from. you must think about where you hit the ball and must to treat each delivery on its merits. baseball has the bunt and the swing as hard as you can. how can a game so simple take so long to play. its got a huge following and huge money is involved, they analyse the living crap out of everything with stats but you either hit or you miss whats to analyse? I am sure that if they took the time to get into it most yanks would find cricket an infinetly more intersesting game to watch and play. probably lucky they dont as with their population and the ability of some of their batters to hit they would likely be a very good cricketing nation

cheers Dave. Using that predictor in there, Ireland (10th) can go to within 8pts (2 wins) of Bangladesh (9th) should they beat the Netherlands in an upcoming game. And should that happen, that would improve their push for Test status, you'd imagine..

Yeah, Cricket is dying for good reasons, along with the Monarchy. The Republic is nigh and Baseball will replace Cricket here.

Kenya, Ireland, Netherlands, Scotland, Canada and Afghanistan have ODI status and Ireland, the Netherlands and Kenya have qualified for the official rankings http://icc-cricket.yahoo.net/match_zone/odi_predictor.php

I don't know what the story was, but an Australian side lost to Eastern Canada in 1975: http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/139/139912.html

Canada of course managed to participate in the ICC world cup back in 1979. However, there seems to have been a lack of progress compare to the other 1979 'qualifier' in Sri Lanka. I guess, Canada now has a new wave of immigration based growth. Expats galore. We've seen through the '90s the UAE participate in the ICC WC with effectively a full team of ex-pats, and Canada currently has a 1st XI of expats. The Netherlands side generally has a good number of expat South Africans. Current Netherlands squad includes : Expats : Adeel Raja (Pak), Wesley Barresi (RSA), Peter William Borren (NZ), Mudassar Bukhari (Pak), Tom Cooper (NSW-Aust), Bradley Kruger (RSA), Bernard Loots (RSA), Mohammad Kashif (Pak), Eric Szwarczynski (RSA) Local born Netherlands players : Steven T de Bruin, Tom Heggelman,Mark Jonkman,Maurits Jonkman, Nick Statham, Bas Zuiderent Not sure : Wilfred Diepeveen, Pieter Seelaar But, then, there's England, and they have a long list of expat South Africans, the odd Australian, Irish, West Indies sourced and so on. So, if it's good enough for mother England, then, roll on the South Asian Canadians, and the worldly Dutch, and whomever else can provide an odd collection of players to wear the national crest.

Might be the proximity of the US, with baseball being the preferred bat and ball game.

Always wondered why Canada was not one of the cricket nations - being a member of the commonwealth. Imagine what the cricketing world would look like today if they had taken to cricket like South Africa or Australia.

Vinay's touched on this, Plas, but in saying "cricket in Canada is leaping ahead in popularity, while it’s hard to say the same about the game in Australia" makes it sound like the game is retreating alarmingly backwards here, which I would be surprised if that's the case.. More opportunity needs to be given to these Associate countries to get better, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Namibia, etc, they all need to be encouraged to play more games against the top sides, or 'A' teams as appropriate. I know Ireland does, but how many other Assoc. countries have ODI status??

Plasmodium,this is one of the good things the ICC has done and it is possible only from the revenue generated by events like the Twenty20 World Cup and the 50 overs WC. In fact I would see Canada become a force quicker than America because I feel Canada is that much more embracing of other cultures and sports. The media,too,is not myopic in Canada. Canada did make the World cup in 2003 if memory serves me correct and Jon Davidson was a shooting star for them. The same Davidson who played Grade for Balmain(again I stand to be corrected here) I will disagree with you on "hard to say the same about the game in Australia" The game from the grassroots up is healthy. It is the administrators who are not sure what time of day it is. I for one am enthused about the development of the game in places like Canada,Afghanistan and Nepal.Sometime back India and Pakistan were playing regularly in Canada but this rivalry must take second place to the political standoff between the two countries. You make a valid point that in a decade from now there will be other countries challenging for the spot held by Australia.

China and Japan is NOT in South-east Asia. They are in East Asia including the Koreas, Taiwan etc. Gee I hope I got it right..

Just a minor geographic correction.... India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/Sri Lanka are in South Asia NOT Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia would be Indonesia/Philippines/China/Japan etc. The rest is ok.