King City, Ontario – After 21 matches played between six competing teams (5 from Canada + Cricket WI B) the finals of the inaugural Global T20 Championship took place last Sunday at the Maple Leaf Cricket Club ground in King City, Ontario.
In a country where the weather is admittedly more inhospitable than not towards cricket, it turned out to be a perfect day for this game and a sold out carnival crowd took advantage of the opportunity to witness Vancouver Knights trash the other finalist, West Indies B with 14 balls remaining.
All honours went to Canadian Saad Bin Zafar (in picture at right) who produced the performance of his pro cricket career
to lead Vancouver Knights to victory with a match-
winning innings of 79 (48 balls, 8×4, 6×3). He also
played a part with the ball claiming two key
wickets, in a spell of 4-1-26-2 to help bowl
Cricket WI B Team out for 145 runs. The role that T20 international tournaments play in the development of cricket globally is well recognized. Global T20 Canada states on its website that it is “poised to catapult cricket as the world’s leading sport with a continued growth in broadcast viewership.”
“While attaining heights of the Indian Premier League and Big Bash is the goal, we believe that youth development of players and officials is integral to the longevity and continued growth of the product,” according to the GT20 website.

Thousands of supporters wrapped in red, white and blue flags and singing the French national anthem poured on to the Champs-Élysées in Paris to celebrate France’s World Cup victory over Croatia, cheering that the nation was now firmly a football superpower.
As the final whistle blew, shouts rang out and vast crowds that had gathered outside local bars began sprinting on to the 2km avenue in the centre of Paris. Riot police stood guard as supporters screamed and sang and let off firecrackers.
About 90,000 people had squeezed into a fan zone under the Eiffel tower to watch the match. From half-time, buses were stopped from circulating in Paris and some of its suburbs “for security reasons” after many young people had climbed on to the roofs of the vehicles to celebrate after France’s semi-final win last week.
Some supporters on the Champs-Élysées had tears in their eyes with what they called “total love” for the young, diverse French squad that had created what commentators have called a new form of peaceful and multicultural French patriotism that has acted as a balm in a society still shaken by years of terrorist attacks.
Even before the result, the Journal du Dimanche released a poll saying 51% of French people thought the football team had already boosted national morale. The economy minister had suggested a victory would also boost economic growth.
France is known for placing more political emphasis on football fixtures than its neighbours. In 1998 when France last won the World Cup, the ethnically diverse team was held up as the solution to France’s race and discrimination issues.
But it is now seen as political folly to have expected Zinedine Zidane’s 1998 side, dubbed “black, blanc, beur” (black, white, Arab), to fix France’s ills simply by winning a match. Soon after, the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had complained of too many black people in the team, made it to the final round of the 2002 French presidential election.
This time, the team are rightly being celebrated as a welcome reflection of multicultural France and all its talent – particularly in the banlieue outside Paris and other large cities. But it is accepted that it is the politicians’ jobs to fix society’s ills, not sportsmen.