It appears some vandals are being spoil-sports in Côte-des-Neiges.
Players at a popular cricket pitch at Van Horne park showed up for a match Tuesday night to find the pitch slashed and much of the top layer removed.
“Oh, my heart is broken,” said Nagarajah Raveen, president of the Vaanavil Sport Club, one of the cricket teams. “I don’t know what happened.”
According to him, the spots where the top layer was removed are slippery, making the $65,000 pitch, which meets international standards, useless.
“I told my city councillor so he says he’s going to do something,” said Raveen, “but I don’t know what’s going on.”
The city councillor is Marvin Rotrand, who said he was surprised what happened, and is doing his best to get answers.
“Well, we wish we knew what happened,” he told Global News at the park. “It looks like there was some vandalism. We don’t know who did it or why, but it really is gonna impact a lot of people.”
He and Raveen pointed the spot is popular and since COVID restrictions eased, players have been going almost daily, but they’ve been using it since before the pandemic.
“Oh, almost two years now,” Raveen noted.
The pitch was opened in August 2019. City of Montreal officials say there is a growing demand in the community for cricket pitches, which reflects changing demographics.
According to Rotrand, the popularity is primarily among residents with roots in other British Commonwealth regions, such as countries in Southeast Asia or the West Indies. There are also many fans from the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
“It comes as a surprise to many to learn that one of the fastest-growing sports in Snowdon right through Côte-des-Neiges, right through the west end of the city and in fact right across Montreal, is cricket,” Rotrand said.
He added that there are demands for even more pitches and according to cricket officials, there are more than 50 teams in two leagues in Montreal.
Rotrand won’t speculate why anyone would vandalize the playing surface but he said he notified police.
“I’d like to rule this out as a hate crime,” he said. “I don’t say that’s what it is, but we’d like to find out what happened.”
He stressed now the focus is trying to find a temporary solution since the materials to replace the pitch might be hard to get.