Cricket used to be a relic of Mississauga’s early colonial past – until Ali Khan came along. In 1966 the 35-year-old Khan was living and working in Mississauga as a chemistry and biology teacher at Gordon Graydon Secondary School, but something was missing.
Originally from Trinidad, Khan was a champion cricket player, member of the Canadian national team and considered by many to be one of the best players of his era.
However, in the mid-1960s cricket was hardly dominating the front pages of the local paper.
A century earlier cricket had been a popular pastime, with players travelling around the region, with Streetsville the team to beat.
However, by the post-war years, cricket had long been supplanted by baseball as the summer sport of choice.
The championship 1977 team of the Hamilton District Cricket League. (photo credit: Mississauga Ramblers)
A century earlier cricket had been a popular pastime, with players travelling around the region, with Streetsville the team to beat.
However, by the post-war years, cricket had long been supplanted by baseball as the summer sport of choice.
Most residents likely considered cricket more of a genteel pastime from a bygone era – and Khan wanted to change that.
“I think one of the best things about the game is the social aspect,” Khan told a reporter with the South Peel Weekly in 1968. “In other years, when I was playing cricket all over the world, we got to meet various heads-of-state and other celebrities.”
Which is why Khan set out to build a cricket scene in what was about to become the new town of Mississauga.
Initially the team was called the Mississauga Cricket Club when Khan and his friends formed it in 1966. Despite the name, there was no place to play locally, so the club used High Park.
In 1968 the team was renamed the Mississauga Ramblers Cricket Sports and Culture Club and started playing at Jack Darling Park, just off the Lakeshore in Lorne Park.
This wasn’t the first time Khan had set out to build a Canadian cricket scene.
A decade earlier, while studying at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, he introduced cricket on the prairie and help jump start the formation of a provincial team. Then in 1965, he was hired by the Toronto and District Cricket Association as a coach, travelling around the region helping nascent clubs get junior teams started – laying the groundwork for a player development system in cricket.
Now he was ready to get something similar started closer to home.
On April 28 the Mississauga Ramblers played their first home game at Oak Ridges Park, just off Mississauga Road.
They quickly followed up with a game against the Brockville Cricket Club in Port Hope. Khan scored 41 runs, Sam Nakoda hit for 40 runs and team captain Don Payne scored 12 runs. But while Mississauga scored 118 runs, Brockville bested them with 119.
No matter, said Khan, the important thing was that a cricket community was beginning to form. There was Sam Mason, a lower order batsman and spin bowler and early team builder, Winston Calliste, who started the Ramblers’ junior program and umpiring association, and Neil George, one of the sport’s best out-fielders, known for making impossible catches look effortless.
In 1969 the Ramblers joined the Hamilton and District Cricket League and the following year, the Ramblers got a new home pitch at Shoreline Park, which today we know as Jack Darling Memorial Park, where the Ramblers played until 1993.
Today the Mississauga Ramblers are one of the largest cricket clubs in Ontario. (photo credit: Mississauga Ramblers)
For the uninitiated, cricket takes place between two teams of eleven players each. It is a bat-and-ball game played on a grass field, with a flat strip of ground called a pitch. At each end of the pitch is a set of wooden stumps, called a wicket.
Each team takes turns batting and playing the field, just like in baseball.
A bowler pitches a cork-filled, leather ball and the batter tries to hit the ball to score runs. The bowler is trying to make the batter miss the ball and hit the wickets to record outs. There are three different types of formats of the game: Five-day test matches, One-Day International cricket and Twenty20 International cricket.
In 2005 the Ramblers moved into their current home at Iceland Sports Park, across from the Paramount Fine Foods Centre at the corner of Hwy 403 and Eglinton Avenue. The Iceland Oval includes five turf pitches, an astro-turf track, sight-screens at both ends and two practice nets.
Today the Ramblers are one of the largest cricket clubs in Ontario, a province where cricket is among the fastest growing sports.
In 2024, the City of Mississauga reported that they received the most requests for two sports: pickleball and cricket.
You can hear more stories about the people and events that helped shape Mississauga via our podcast, We Built This City: Tales of Mississauga, available on your favourite podcast platform or from our website.