De­spite all the prob­lems fac­ing the Crick­et Cana­da board, with the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) putting sanc­tions in place, chair­man of the Cana­di­an chap­ter of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mas­ters Coun­cil (IMC) Ak­shay Pandya has brought smiles to Cana­di­ans this sum­mer by get­ting the world to come and play at the IMC Over-60 World Cup.

​Four­teen coun­tries, in­clud­ing the West In­dies, are cur­rent­ly in Cana­da vy­ing for the ti­tle, and fans have been com­ing out in num­bers to see the play­ers in ac­tion.

It has been re­mark­able to see the qual­i­ty of crick­et and the fit­ness lev­el of these O-60 crick­eters, ac­cord­ing to Pandya.

​“We have worked tire­less­ly over the past year and more in try­ing to bring this tour­na­ment to Cana­da. We are not a Test-play­ing coun­try, so we don’t have the type of fa­cil­i­ties like the big crick­et­ing na­tions, but we have been able to pull it off so far,” said Pandya.

​“We have got­ten the as­sis­tance of the var­i­ous coun­cils here in On­tario and it has been quite an amaz­ing spec­ta­cle. We have ba­si­cal­ly saved the sum­mer as far as crick­et is con­cerned here.”

Apart from the West In­dies, the oth­er coun­tries tak­ing part are hosts Cana­da, Aus­tralia, Eng­land, New Zealand, Pak­istan, South Africa, In­dia, Sri Lan­ka, Emerg­ing XI, Zim­bab­we, Scot­land, Wales and USA.

Pandya con­tin­ued: “Mas­ters crick­et one must un­der­stand is all about keep­ing men fit at a se­nior age. This is re­al­ly the aim and we are us­ing crick­et as the ve­hi­cle to do it. We have had tremen­dous suc­cess and we are def­i­nite­ly go­ing to con­tin­ue this. The IMC led by chair­man Stir­ling Ham­man has done a fan­tas­tic job and the move­ment is grow­ing ex­po­nen­tial­ly.”