In March, just days before the Canadian national cricket team was supposed to fly to Sri Lanka for a month-long training camp in preparation for its biggest tournament of the year, it looked like its star player, Rizwan Cheema, would not be going. Cheema is a refugee from Pakistan, and the government’s position was cut and dried: because he had not yet received his landed immigrant status, if he left the country, he would not be allowed back in.

The tournament was the International Cricket Council’s World Cup qualifier, in which 12 countries ranked at the Associate level (one notch below the top dogs at the elite Test level) would compete for a spot at the 2011 World Cup. Held once every four years, the World Cup championship is the third-largest sporting event on the planet, watched by more than two billion TV viewers around the world. Canada has never done well at the World Cup—one win and 12 losses in three appearances—but with Rizwan Cheema on the team, expectations for the qualifier were high.

Cricket Canada, the sport’s governing body, spent months gently yet persistently lobbying Jason Kenney, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, to step in so that Cheema could attend the camp and tournament. Finally, after dozens of letters and phone calls—helped by a newspaper story that caught the attention of senior officers in the department—Cheema was granted a special travel visa.

Though cricket may not be as popular here as it is in other countries, Toronto, with its large expat South Asian and Caribbean communities, is the epicentre of the sport in North America. The Toronto and District Cricket Association, the largest amateur league on the continent, consists of 92 teams and more than 1,300 players, with matches played on 29 fields across the GTA. The majority of our national team is drawn from the ranks of the TDCA—immigrant players born and raised in such cricket superpowers as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, England and Australia.

Cheema is the TDCA’s brightest star—a former cab driver with a knack for knocking the snot out of the ball. A month shy of turning 31, an age when most top-ranked players are at their peak, Cheema is a surprising success story, having only recently rediscovered the sport after emigrating to Toronto nearly eight years ago. In his short time on the national team, he has attracted significant international attention, not just from fans but from scouts representing foreign teams. Just when he’s about to secure landed immigrant status, Cheema could be lured back to South Asia to play in the big leagues.

Cricket isn’t everybody’s cup of chai. It’s a mannered, gentlemanly pursuit governed by rules so specific and so arcane that it’s no wonder they’re called laws. Yet, for all its stuffiness and enduring formality, some aspects of the game are remarkably carefree. There are no rules dictating the exact size or shape of the playing field, for instance, resulting in matches contested on squares, circles and ovals of varying dimensions. And it possesses a touch of the ridiculous, with its rather Seussian terminology—dibbly dobbly, doosra, googly—and games that can last for days and still result in a draw.

Although hundreds of runs may be scored in a single game, cricket can still seem like baseball on Valium. There are batters (called batsmen); and pitchers (called bowlers), who try to get the batsmen out, or dismiss them, before they can score any runs. The batsmen, meanwhile, must protect three little sticks, called the wicket, from being hit by the ball. Home runs are called sixes and are worth six runs; doubles are called fours. There aren’t any bases, just two ends of a 20-metre-long rectangular infield or pitch (also sometimes called a wicket) that the batsmen must run between after they hit the ball. Each trip (bat firmly in hand) is one run. In addition to the bowler, there are 10 fielders: a catcher, called a wicket-keeper, and nine others scattered about playing positions with such names as silly point, leg gully, extra cover and third slip. And while the ball is about the size and hardness of a baseball and travels just as fast, only the wicket-keeper wears gloves—big, pillowy ones that make him look like Mickey Mouse.