It's been a while, and today as I was catching up on the latest happenings in my cricketing hometown of Hong Kong, I realised just how long it's been.
I'm sure all sorts of records were broken on Thursday when Hong Kong racked up 442-3 and then bowled the mighty Myanmar out for 20 in reply. No surprise to see Hussain Butt scoring a 42-ball century - he's been piling on the runs for fun in the league for the last couple of years.
What struck me at a personal level though, is that there's only one guy left in that squad whom I played alongside - Alex "Jonty" French. For that matter, I only played alongside him at U-19 level, and he was barely out of nappies at the time! I didn't think I was that old, but now I'm starting to wonder, although Rahul Sharma certainly has many years on me!
It's wonderful to see that the cricketing infrastructure and administration in Hong Kong has continued to move forward. In my day, we had a senior squad, and just about had a U-19 squad working together. Today, the 11 year olds are playing internationals, and the women's squad will be facing Pakistan for a place in their World Cup! That's progress.
In the meantime, there is a battle raging over the attempted selection of a national U-15 side in the USA. I thought the political wrangling and cronyism around the senior and U-19 squad was disturbing, but USACA has reached new lows this time around. I'll probably write about it in more detail later, but it just goes to show that some things never change, and that the ICC are, if anything, too lenient in their stance on the American cricket body.
1 comment:
Cricketing hometown of HK?
Interest piqued. Do elaborate.
Lived there four years (studied at/graduated from HKIS), before moving out. Loved the place, sadly, didn't really have the time to play cricket much. Attended some of the Sixes games and a few other events, but never really got that much into the cricket scene there (aside from tennis court games afterschool with a taped ball, and watching a lot thanks to PCCW).
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