FG Johnson, who was Governor of Assiniboia from 1858-9, gave a speech to the English tourists of 1859, explaining that cricket had been played with homemade equipment at the Red River Settlement, when he was Governor. This is the earliest reference to cricket in the settlement that was to become Winnipeg.

JJ Hargreaves related the short-lived history of the North West Cricket Club in his book The Red River Settlement. The North West Cricket Club was formed in 1864 by William Coldwell, but without any other teams to play the Club soon disappeared. However, in 1870 the Red River Settlement was renamed Winnipeg and the Winnipeg Cricket Club was set up in the same year. The newspapers of the 1870s prove that from these beginnings cricket became a popular sport in the new settlement. By 1886 there were more than a dozen clubs in the city of Winnipeg.

The North West Cricket Association was set up in 1896 by representatives of the Winnipeg elite, although matches continued to be arranged on a challenge basis. In 1905 the Manitoba Cricket Association was established and became responsible for overseeing games played between local teams. The MCA is still in existence today. [Source Encyclopaedia of Manitoba] It should be noted that Sixty Years of Canadian Cricket states that in 1893 the new Association did good work in its first year, with Bannatyne as Secretary and Baker as President, so the 1896 figure for the formation of the North West Cricket Association is questionable, though widely quoted.

In 1882 a team from Winnipeg toured Ontario and Quebec, registering wins against sides from Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Another tour of America took place in 1890. The seminal work Sixty Years of Canadian Cricket, published in 1895, stated on page 241 that cricket in Manitoba showed "no signs of diminished popularity. It is a fact that the game in Winnipeg and the North West is becoming more popular every season." In 1908 the Canadian Pacific Railway Cricket Club went on a successful tour of Minneapolis, whilst the Philadelphians toured Winnipeg in 1912 indicating that Manitoba cricketers could compete with the best players in North America at this time. Cricket in Winnipeg arguably reached its zenith in 1913 when the Winnipeg Wanderers beat Toronto to win the John Ross Robertson Trophy, the Grey Cup for Canadian cricket. This was the first time that the trophy had been won by a side west of Ontario.

The game slowly declined after the First World War, although Winnipeg cricketers managed to raise enough money to host the 1932 Australians. Like the rest of Canada, cricket in Winnipeg has always been dependent on immigration. In the second half of the twentieth century the game relied more on immigrants from the West Indies than those from Britain. Whilst more recently it has been the immigrants from Asia who have ensured than Manitoba cricket continues to be competitive at a provincial level.

Link back to the first established clubs page.