\n\tLike father, like son: a passion for the sport of cricket runs deep in one Edmonton family.<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd it’s deep enough that Tyson Gordon Jr. left home in January to pursue playing and training in Jamaica, where the 14-year-old is a member of the country\u2019s Under-15 cricket team.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen his family gets to watch him play from a distance online \u2014 Edmonton is about 5,000 kilometres from the Caribbean country \u2014 emotions run strong for his father.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhen the game goes live on YouTube, watching him \u2026 it`s breathtaking,\u201d said Tyson Gordon Sr. \u201cWe want him to do well. Your heart is pounding. All in all, to see him growing into the man he wants to become, trying to achieve and take a step forward, it`s great to see that it`s working out and moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe senior Gordon says \u201cit\u2019s really hard\u201d having his son far from home but understands the commitment it takes to pursue playing the sport at a high level. After all, he once played internationally for both Jamaica and Canada.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cGrowing up, I tried to teach him that you`ve got to decide what you want to be in life. If you want to be a cricketer, you`ve got to start from a young age,\u201d said Gordon Sr., who played for Jamaica\u2019s senior national team in 2005 and later moved to Canada, for whom he started playing in 2010 and competed in the sport\u2019s World Cup in 2011. \u201cHere in Canada, unfortunately, we don’t have an under-15 program. We only have under-19 \u2026 I told him, \u2018\u00ccf you really want to play and you really want to be a part of Jamaica`s team, you have to attend school there and start from the lowest level.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn Jamaica, the young Gordon is working on gaining strength and experience to go with the strong technical skills he\u2019s developed over the past few years living in Edmonton as he\u2019s played and trained mostly with older players.<\/p>\n
\n\tBack home this summer, the teenaged Gordon continues to train almost every day. He credits his father\u2019s influence for his love of the game \u2013 the junior Gordon says it\u2019s his only hobby \u2013 and for helping him develop the skills needed to pursue his dream of playing internationally one day for the senior West Indies team.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a very good thing to have,\u201d Gordon Jr. said of the influence on him by his father. \u201cI have someone to teach me and show me ways of playing cricket, and the way I go about myself playing cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWatching his son pick up his passion and take it to a high level has been satisfying for Gordon Sr.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt feels really good because of all the sports in the world, that\u2019s the No. 1 sport that I know and invest all my time in, so it makes it easier as a dad to teach him what he wants to learn,\u201d he said. \u201c(Cricket has) been my passion and it\u2019s started to be his as well. Since he was young, he would watch me play, always watching on the computer with his mom when I was travelling and playing. (Then) being home playing games, he was always at my games.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWith files from CTV News Edmonton’s Galen McDougall<\/p>\n