La Barrière Park unveils new cricket pitches

All coaches, athletes and fans of one of the fastest growing sports in Manitoba were winners on Saturday at the unveiling of the province’s “epicentre of cricket.”

La Barrière Park is now home to three regulation-sized cricket pitches, practice cages and shade structures.

“Sports like cricket bring so many people together. If you come to watch the play here you’ll (hear many accents),” said Bhavana Bonde, a cricket enthusiast and landscape architect from Architecture49, the Winnipeg-based firm tasked with designing the project.

Bonde said the park is being frequented by cricketers who are South Indian, Punjabi, Australian, Carribean Islanders and New Zealanders, among others.

The community of local cricketers is far more organized and larger now than it was when she first moved to Canada from India more than 25 years ago.

The Manitoba Cricket Association’s registration has quadrupled over the last four years. Its 2025 roster includes 72 competitive teams, up from 18.

Equipped with bats, balls and matching uniforms, competitors from across the Prairies descended on La Barrière Park, a 323-acre site just south of the Perimeter Highway, for a long-weekend tournament.

The competition served as the backdrop for a ribbon-cutting ceremony that was interrupted, perhaps fittingly, when a cricket ball went astray.

The City of Winnipeg and MCA co-hosted the grand opening; while the park is outside city limits, local councillors footed the majority of the $1.5-million construction project that began in 2018.

Audience members were told a recent surge in newcomers from countries where cricket is a national sport is primarily driving its growth in Manitoba.

At the same time, Coun. Janice Lukes (Waverley West) argued the ball-and-bat game is as much a part of Manitoba history as hockey.

The North-West Cricket Club was founded in Manitoba in 1864, several years before Louis Riel is credited for launching the Red River Rebellion.

Riel and other Métis leaders constructed a successful barrier — the namesake for the new cricket venue — in 1869 to protect their land from the government of the day.

“Cricket has been played in Manitoba now for over 150 years. Over 150 years!” Lukes told the grand opening of what she called “the epicentre of cricket in Manitoba.”

Multiple city councillors spoke about fielding complaints from residents about cricketers transforming parking lots into cricket pitches due to the lack of designated facilities for athletes.

MCA president Paramjit Shahi said his goal is to develop a fourth pitch on the grounds of La Barrière Park and install an irrigation system, bleachers and floodlights.

“This is just a start,” Shahi said, adding he wants to bring in lighting so athletes can compete into the early hours of the morning.

As is, it remains the biggest outdoor cricket facility in western Canada, he noted.

There are currently outdoor fields in Assiniboine Park, the Maples and Waverley West. They host approximately 400 formal games every year, combined.

MCA is actively lobbying politicians to support the development of a pitch in Portage la Prairie. Players from Winkler and Brandon currently drive to Winnipeg to play, Shahi said.

“This is one of the reasons I’m staying in Winnipeg,” said Milan Dave, a cricketer who is originally from India, gesturing to the new field he competed on Saturday.

“I’ve made so many friends — the (cricket) community is really good.”

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca