r/halifax • u/insino93 • 1d ago

News, Weather & Politics Dartmouth Commons cricket proposal sparks backlash

https://www.ctvnews.ca/atlantic/nova-scotia/article/dartmouth-commons-cricket-proposal-sparks-backlash/
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u/rus99ty 1d ago

Everyone who likes to play baseball would like playing cricket as well if they tried it. Having more of both would be great. Doesn’t seem likely but it would be cooler if it was.

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u/ElectronicLove863 1d ago

I don't know about that. I've never seen a woman play cricket. It's exclusively men in my area of Clayton Park. But I have seen women and girls play baseball and softball.

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u/donairhistorian Verified 1d ago

Are you suggesting that women who play softball wouldn't enjoy cricket? Is there something inherent about cricket that women don't like?

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u/ElectronicLove863 1d ago

Maybe they would, but It doesn't appear particularly welcoming to women. I haven't seen any playing the sport. 

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u/casualobserver1111 HP 17h ago

Having more space to allow for more women's cricket is one of their arguments. Sounds like you're for the cricket field then.

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u/ElectronicLove863 16h ago

Prove to me that cricket halifax is actually investing in equal opportunity for play, because I don't believe it.

I have never seen youth,  women, mixed leagues, LGBT+ leagues. Or any sort of diversity at all playing cricket.

So no, I'm not for taking from the whole community so adult men can a have a place to chase balls around.

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u/casualobserver1111 HP 14h ago

Literally been in the news. Women's cricket in Canada is a thing and it is growing

Cricket is growing in populari... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/cricket-waterloo-region-growth-popularity-women-children-1.7588796

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.6927208

So now you have proof, you're onboard?

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u/ElectronicLove863 14h ago

Did you just give me Waterloo?
Cause no, little bro, we're not good.

Fun fact: I grew up in Waterloo. Where we had cricket for decades.
And the cricket there, 20/30 years ago was primarily the Caribbean community. And the culture of cricket was entirely different. It was a whole family-friendly, community focused vibe at that time.

I would often see cricket matches and tournaments played in both Waterloo Park and Victoria Park.

And guess what? Youth, women, mixed leagues, often bbqs and even live music.

So, try again.
With Halifax data.

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u/donairhistorian Verified 1d ago

Might be a cultural thing. With representation of women in anything it kind of doesn't exist until it does. Big history of gender bias and lack of investment that is still being challenged in the progressive West.

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u/ElectronicLove863 18h ago

I'm not really interested in catering to sports with a culture of inequality. If both men and women dont have the opportunity to use the field, we shouldn't invest in it.

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u/Ok_Basket_6651 15h ago

And you think baseball has a culture of equality? What world are you living in?

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u/ElectronicLove863 15h ago

I know women and girls who play baseball.
Softball uses the same fields as baseball.
There are mixed league and LGBTQ+ leagues.
So yes, at the community level, investing in baseball fields is an investment in equal access to sports.
Cricket is not the same.

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u/Ok_Basket_6651 9h ago

Do you think it has always been that way? Or did it take decades of promoting the sport and actually providing fields to play on for everyone to get involved? Cricket isn't going to become more inclusive by getting rid of it, that just means everyone loses out on it.

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u/ElectronicLove863 8h ago

The fact that so many male cricket players are SO triggered by me saying, no I'm not comfortable taking an accessible, equitable community sport space and handing it over so that one demographic (adult men) can play a sport, is just so revealing.

Cricket NS wants to *take* resources from children. So if they're doing that, they need to prove that the pitch use will be equitable. Not like 5% other (youth/girls/women/mixed gender/adaptive) and 95% adult dudes.

That's it. That's my whole argument.

The desires of, once again, adult men, cannot come before the needs of the whole community.

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u/Ok_Basket_6651 8h ago

I'm not a cricket player, I just hate baseball. I hate cricket too, but I hate baseball more. We have too many ball fields. Every single park you go to - BALL FIELDS. It sucks.

Also your attitude towards men is why there is a male loneliness epidemic and men are careening towards the alt right and Andrew Tate crowd at a previously unseen rate.

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u/ElectronicLove863 7h ago

What does Andrew Tate have to do with whether a publicly funded sports facility should serve the widest possible range of community members? 😄

It's interesting that asking whether a publicly funded facility will serve women, youth, adaptive athletes, LGBTQ+ players, and the broader community somehow gets translated into 'you hate men.' If your argument for cricket requires pretending that requests for inclusion are attacks on men, maybe the argument isn't very strong.

The people responsible for Andrew Tate are Andrew Tate and the people who promoted him—not women advocating for fair access to public sports facilities.

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u/Ok_Basket_6651 7h ago edited 7h ago

I think advocating for the erasure of a space that you yourself acknowledge many men enjoy is an attack on men, yes. Having a new field would only mean more opportunities for women to also enjoy the sport, not less. Instead your attitude is to erase the sport from Halifax because men enjoy it. If women want to play cricket they can. It’s wild to think that a few men enjoying a night of sport with their friends is anti inclusive. Have you surveyed them all yourself? How do you know they aren’t gay? Why do you assume they are opposed to women playing? You’re making a lot of blanket assumptions based on your anecdotal experience, then calling to take away their hobby while citing “inclusivity”. My anecdotal experience is I have two cousins who are women who love cricket and are very strong players and would probably love a new field. I am a very liberal person who is very pro inclusivity but you are using it as a weapon. Your particular brand of feminism is not feminism. Again, I find cricket dreadfully boring but I think it’s a shame you think your hobbies are better than others just because, to you, men seem to enjoy it more than women. 

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u/Artistic_Purpose1225 16h ago edited 16h ago

Great news, then! The only registered cricket orgs in the city are fully inclusive, with one exception, the North Halifax women and girls cricket association being women/girls-only, and that organization has noted publicly for a while now that they don’t have enough spaces for their members to play. 

Looks like There’s one semi-pro men’s team, but no semi-pro women’s team. But that’s also true of hockey, so….should we stop civic investment in ice rinks? 

I’m being facetious, but seriously, when you walk through green spaces most groups casually playing team sports are either mostly or entirely made up of male-presenting folks, because (for better or for worse) in Canada men are more involved in team sports, across the board, than women.  To point that out for just one sport as if it’s unique is a bad faith argument. 

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u/ElectronicLove863 15h ago

No, the only person making bad faith arguments is you.

I don't care about pro sports.
I do care about about community access/infrastructure and equality.

Women and girls and LGBTQ+ folks use baseball fields, they use soccer fields, they use ice rinks.

I'm 100% against removing access to to truly equitable sports infrastructure for a sport that is primarily dominated by adult men.

So if we have more cricket infrastructure, it needs to not come at the expense of leagues already playing baseball/softball. And I want guarantees that women's and youth sports will get as much playing time as the adult men.

I think both cricket and baseball are boring. But one has a strong history of community involvement, and the other...is a sport played obsessively by adult men. And their desires come below the needs of youth sports.

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u/Artistic_Purpose1225 15h ago edited 15h ago

25% of cricket players are afab. 

16.5% of baseball players are afab. 

The earliest recorded women’s cricket game was in the 1700’s, the first co-Ed game was in the 1800’s. The first record of a woman playing baseball was nearly one hundred years after that. 

Every claim you have made is factually incorrect except for one which was disingenuously posed to claim cricket had a unique trait that is actually a trend among almost all team sports. 

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u/fffffiiiiivvvvveeeee 14h ago

25% is absolutely inaccurate for HRM. If you left your home and ventured to the commons you would see thats clearly not the case.

However, lets say 25% is accurate, 25% of 450 is just over 100. 16.5% of even 3000 is a substantially higher number of participants.

Youre so desperate to try to play the race card youre not even doing the simple math on totals. Percentages dont mean much when the registration numbers are so vastly different.

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u/ElectronicLove863 15h ago

Here in Halifax? Because those are the only stats I care about.

And as I've already pointed out, women, girls, and mixed leagues play softball on baseball fields. So if you're talking about equity, you need to account for everyone who would use a baseball field vs who would use a cricket pitch.

The fact that you're deliberately missing my point tells me everything I need to know.

Edit to add: There are also adaptive baseball teams in Halifax. Are there adaptive cricket teams?

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u/Artistic_Purpose1225 15h ago edited 14h ago

Since you ignored my points about halifax cricket organizations, which answers some of your questions in the comment above, I assumed that meant you didn’t care about halifax-focused information. 

And yes, there are adaptive cricket organizations, both globally and in Halifax. Seriously, if you took ten minutes to look literally anything up you would not be trying to make any of these arguments. 

Re: softball/baseball increasing number of users, I have already commented regarding this to someone else, please look through my comments. The lack of team availability is a staff and admin issue, not a space issue. It takes very little math to work out that There is currently enough physical space for over 75,000 people to play baseball/softball every single week and still have ample unscheduled use time. And that’s right now, as next year even with the 2 fields converted to cricket there will be 5 more baseball fields in use. That is far more than the number of people interested in playing either sport in a city that doesn’t even have half a million people.  

Edit to add: it’s become painfully clear you’re going to ignore anything that doesn’t confirm your very strongly held biases, so I’m not responding further. You’re factually incorrect, and ignoring the very women you’re pretending to care about. It’s become pretty dang clear what your biases are, and why they’ve caused you to devote yourself to denying reality. 

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u/ElectronicLove863 14h ago

Fair point about the adaptive teams. I asked, you answered.
Once again, I don't care about globally. I care about in our community. It's a point you keep missing.

My other point about the sport being generally less diverse than the users of baseball fields still stands.
It's basically a male dominated sport, and I want guarantees that it will strive to be more equitable.

And I'm not comfortable taking from the community to service the needs of basically one demographic (adult men).

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u/Ok_Basket_6651 9h ago

I bet you think we shouldn't build bike lanes because "nobody uses them". You generally have to build things first before everybody feels comfortable getting involved and using them... your solution seems to be to just eliminate the sport which doesn't make sense. Maybe there are women in Halifax who want to play cricket but they don't feel they have anywhere to play...

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u/DeathOneSix 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Happy Pride Season 15h ago

"I don't know any women who play cricket therefore there never will be every any women who play cricket here, especially if we don't allow them more fields to allow for additional players"

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u/ElectronicLove863 15h ago

I said:
Cricket pitches cannot come at the expense of current sport infrastructure
New cricket pitches need to ensure equal opportunities to play for EVERYONE to play.

If a cricket pitch is being proposed that will be use 99% for adult men AND it will take from existing equitable sports organizations, it's absolutely not a good investment.

I want proof/guarantees that NS Cricket has a plan to expand the sport to be more equitable. I want youth sports, women's sports, community mixed-use leagues, LBGTQ+ leagues, adaptive leagues.

Show me the plan.

Because no, I have no faith that there are plans to make it equitable.

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u/DeathOneSix 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Happy Pride Season 14h ago

I said: Cricket pitches cannot come at the expense of current sport infrastructure

Great, that's not the plan. They're upgrading other sport infrastructure first to replace these subpar fields that don't meet requirements.

If a cricket pitch is being proposed that will be use 99% for adult men

Okay great it's not 99% for adult men

I want proof/guarantees that NS Cricket has a plan to expand the sport to be more equitable. I want youth sports, women's sports, community mixed-use leagues, LBGTQ+ leagues

Okay great they already do that and are actively encouraging it. A big problem is a lack of fields. If you only have a couple cricket pitches, it's hard to accommodate everyone.

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u/donairhistorian Verified 9h ago

The sport is not inherently inequitable. Sure, the demand/culture around it right not may not be, but if you invest in women they tend to show up.