Steve Ferley

Special to The Lake Report

The Niagara Cricket Club hosted the 45th annual cricket encounter between the Shaw Festival and the Stratford Festival last week. 

The players – actors and backstage staff from both arts bodies – desperately wanted to continue with the annual fixture despite all the COVID-19 restrictions.

In normal years, only players formally contracted at either of the two festivals can be selected. But these days both the Shaw and Stratford have very few of their normal cricket strength on contract.

The Shaw cricket team’s organizer-in-chief Jeff Irving said the answer was simply to mix-and-match the two teams to arrive at two equally balanced outfits playing under strict social distancing and sanitizing rules. 

Leading lights of Shaw cricket, artistic director Tim Carroll and vice-chair Ian Joseph, both agree the result was “extremely close.”
 

All funds raised at the game by the players, families and supporters – through sponsorships, donations –  will go to the Actors Fund of Canada, a charity providing support to those in the profession.