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The mention of Namibia does not seem to be generating the intense excitement I expected. When I ask Canadians whether they are looking forward to Canada Cricket’s international tour to Namibia this week, I am not getting a euphoric fist-pump of a yes in reply; instead, they tend to look puzzled and shake their heads, often confiding that they did not know Canada had a cricket team, and occasionally pointing out that they did not actually know where Namibia is. I concluded that most Canadians did not care about the valiant exploits of their cricket team, let alone what cricket even is. What a damn shame.

Yet one friend I asked did not conform to this rule. He responded that he was very excited for Namibia. But then a strange thing happened: he caught himself like an actor delivering the wrong line of a script, and he attempted, with eyes shifting from side to side and with his face reddening, to say that he did not know anything about Namibia. Two men in suits and dark glasses came out of nowhere, and hurried over to where we were sitting. They claimed to be the uncles of my friend and quickly escorted him away.

I smelled a rat. The investigative journalist in me knew exactly what was going on here-a national cover up of Canadian cricket, And the investigative journalist in me would not stop until I had discovered why.

Trawling through the Canadian National Archives, I found some evidence which only added to the mystery of cricket’s low profile in Canada: first, Canada  actually played the world’s first international cricket match in 1844, began over 30 years before the Ashes, the now-famous Test Cricket matchup between England and Australia; second, in 1867 cricket was named as the national sport of Canada by prime minister John A. Macdonald; third, Canada actually beat Australia, one of the world’s best teams at the time, as recently as 1974. At this point, a sinister-looking archivist interrupted my research, warning that if I did not leave right away, “there would be trouble.” 

Further research was hard to come by. I was trailed by men in suits, my apartment was searched, and my phone was tapped. Eventually I stumbled on the crucial information that put the jigsaw into place: Canada has won two cricket matches in World Cup history, one against Bangladesh in 2003, one against Kenya in 2011. However, the strange thing was, it almost seemed as if the other matches they played were close, but they underperformed. Suddenly it seemed obvious-Canadian cricket is part of a conspiracy for world cup domination. They are deliberately covering up their cricketing credentials by underplaying,  allowing Canada to take the world by storm over the next few years, catching each team in their complacency, and sending Canada on in a glorious and unstoppable waltz to a World Cup triumph in 2015. 

So be warned, world. Cricket Canada is planning global dominance, and it will all begin in Namibia.

[Full disclosure: the author is a failed investigative journalist, desperate for any sort of publicity]