Cool Innings

Welcome to St John's, Newfoundland, inaugural outpost of the British Empire and self-proclaimed oldest city in North America. The Union Jack still flutters on flagpoles, the pubs serve pints, and there's a fish-n-chip shop on every street, so colonial expats like me should feel right at home. Come June, however, and it quickly becomes apparent that something is missing. There's no cricket.

In some ways, this is unsurprising. Not without good reason is Newfoundland known as The Rock. The glaciers of the last ice age scraped off most of the island's soil and dumped it in the Atlantic, so flat, grassy areas are scarcer than non-Etonians at an English prime ministerial reunion.

The local climate is hardly conducive either. St John's may be further south than Paris, but the Labrador Current ensures it is Canada's snowiest, cloudiest and windiest major city. The seasons often take a Pythonesque approach, with winter giving spring and summer a miss and going straight back into autumn. So ice hockey is king, and cricket isn't even the bastard son of the Prince of Wales.

It hasn't always been like this, though. In the latter half of the 19th century, St John's saw teams from "Avalons" to "Zulus" battle it out for summer supremacy, and a league championship was set up in 1891. The Dominion of Newfoundland (as it was) even managed to produce three first-class cricketers. But not long into the 20th century, the sport began losing a territorial battle with football and baseball, and soon its popularity had dipped lower than Colin Jackson in an Olympic photo finish. And so it has remained.

Until now. Until a daft and eclectic group of like-minded souls decided that this would be the year Newfoundland cricket was resurrected.

It began, like so many modern movements, with a website. The man who got the revivalist ball rolling was Chelsea fan Paul Canniff, who set up www.stjohnscricketclub.com in 2009 to see if there were any other lost cricketers in the provincial capital. I'd only just moved here, an optimistic sun hat the sole item of cricket kit to cross the Atlantic with me, so was delighted to sign up, and a few others were too. We couldn't rustle up a full team, though, and the brief summer was over before we'd made much progress.

Then, earlier this year, Paul contacted our select band and told us of an email from the mainland. The Nova Scotia Cricket Association had found the site and sent us an invitation. Would we be able to get a team together to represent Newfoundland in the Maritime Canada Twenty20 tournament later in the year?

Well, what could we say? Of course we would!

Initial conversations with local sports fans didn't bode well - "Cricket? Isn't that the game where you ride a horse?" - but the friendly garrulousness of Newfoundlanders meant that, despite their bafflement, word soon began to spread.

Within a couple of weeks our new recruits included a Viking-like outdoorsman from the island's Northern Peninsula (who just happens to be married to a Kiwi, and has actually attended a Twenty20 international), an Irish rugby player, a Manxman who rowed for Oxford University, and an Ontarian who used to play baseball. Oh, and two ex-professional English footballers.

And then, in one of those moments of serendipity, I cut through a nondescript park on my way back from a Saturday shopping trip and stumbled upon a tape-ball game taking place on a run-down basketball court. I wandered over in amazement, and the two teams told me it was the first India v Bangladesh match of the season, and that they gathered there to play every weekend. I couldn't help but laugh. Twenty-two cricketers? In one place? In Newfoundland? Impossible!

And so the revival begins. For much of its history, Newfoundland swapped salted codfish for Jamaican rum. And if the residents of that fine island managed to enter a bobsleigh team in the winter Olympics, the occupants of this one can cobble together a squad for a regional cricket competition. Cool Runnings has been and gone. It's time for Cool Innings.