Graduate brings love of cricket to college
Nabiullah Nawabi may have made the leap from student to graduate, but there’s one identity that he’ll never slip: cricket player. Luckily for Algonquin College, he also spent much of his time at the college raising the profile for the sport, establishing a team and rallying a new crew eager to carry it forward.
From the moment he immigrated to Canada from Afghanistan in 2006, Nawabi knew that he had to make cricket a big part of his life. He immediately joined the Ottawa Valley Cricket Council (OVCC), started playing and even joined the executive and became OVCC’s team captain representing Ottawa throughout the region. He played tournaments across Ontario and outside Canada, and even won the Best Athlete award from the city of Ottawa. So, when he became a Social Service Worker student at Algonquin in 2016, he had a natural question: why wasn’t there a team here?
“I started inquiring why there was no cricket team and I decided to see if we could have a team representing Algonquin College at provincial or city-level cricket,” he says. The college was quite supportive, particularly the International Education Centre. In 2018, he started the team, which played in the Capital Cup against other schools including Carleton University, the University of Ottawa, and even a university from Toronto in a four-team tournament. And Algonquin College won! Then Covid-19 hit, shutting down play opportunities.
After two years, cricket started up again, and Algonquin College won another tournament in Ottawa. The following year they competed in the national men’s championship, with Nawabi as captain, and won. On the heels of their national championship, several students, including Nawabi (the only from Algonquin College) were selected to play on the Canadian team in a competition in Florida.
Nawabi was getting closer to graduation and looking for new talent to continue the cricket legacy. “By that time, I was graduated, but I was still helping out organizing and taking on the leadership from behind to support the younger students in terms of training them and making sure that Algonquin College still had a team to be able to participate in these tournaments,” he says.
As a result, the team won its third consecutive Capital Cup in Ottawa. Once again, they were invited to play in the men’s national championship, and with the financial help and support of the International Education Centre, got to compete, with Nawabi as a player/coach. This time, they won. “Winning that tournament wasn’t an easy thing to do. But we had a few players, currently, students at Algonquin College, who pulled off some amazing cricket talent and cricketing skills so that was a huge achievement,” recalls Nawabi.
Meanwhile, Nawabi was also moving forward, both from Algonquin and in the cricket world. He decided to continue his education by bridging to a degree from a university where he graduated in May 2022 with an honours degree in Conflict Studies. He became vice-president of the Ottawa Valley Cricket League and joined the board of directors for the Ontario Cricket Council. Nawabi says he’s excited to keep cricket central to his life. “Cricket brings a lot of community communities together. It’s a competitive sport, but it builds your connections with members of other communities and brings closeness,” he says.
With that in mind, Nawabi is also looking to bring his cricket mission even more widely to Ottawa. “My goals are to try to introduce cricket at a high school level, so kids can grow up with it in school,” he says. Already he and his colleagues have been to a few Ottawa high schools, supported by Cricket Canada, and he’s personally completed his Level 1 cricket coaching, which allows him to coach children. He also wants to build more cricket facilities in Ottawa.
Nawabi says he was inspired by his Social Service Worker program at Algonquin College to think about ways to give back. “Learning all these things from Algonquin College taught me that I have to do something for the college as well that will remain there. What I know best is to give back is cricket. So, I started the cricket team, and luckily it stayed.”
