Cricket debut at Asian Games :Image via Wikipedia
I am looking forward to the first time China plays a Test Match at Lords!
Now China has entered the cricket arena.
After Chinese spectators sat through a short video explaining the basics of the game, cricket made its Asian Games debut on Saturday. The crowd swiftly caught on and cheered every run on a slightly parched pitch as China’s women beat Malaysia on a sunny afternoon. “They were the best. In terms of their fielding they were very well drilled,” said Roger Golding, an English spectator in the crowd. “They didn’t miss a trick.”
China has underscored the state’s vast commitment to sports as a symbol of national pride by hiring top coaches and pumping money into less popular sports — and getting very good at them. “It was very strange at first but we’re slowly getting the hang of it,” said 19-year-old Chinese fan Li Zibo of cricket, hugely popular in Commonwealth nations but little-known in China. “It’s very fresh and we’ve never seen it before,” added Deng Xiaozhu, another young spectator who said he had been given a free ticket for the match.
A rapid-fire North American-style commentator was employed to liven up proceedings for the Chinese fans but stands were half-empty even though organisers had said that tickets for all weekend cricket had sold out.
Cricket was last seen at a major multi-sport event at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, but was dropped for the next three editions in England, Australia and India. Its Asian Games debut has already been marred by India’s refusal to field men’s or women’s teams due to international and domestic commitments.
India, whose huge cricket-mad television audiences make them an attractive proposition for any organiser, are currently hosting New Zealand for a Test and one-day series.
Asia’s other big three – Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh – sent second-string teams for the Twenty20 tournament in Guangzhou, robbing the event of its star appeal.
The International Cricket Council, the sport’s ruling body, has identified China as one of the major new markets along with the United States for the development of the sport.
The k2p blog 