Shandong, the second-most populous province in China, has become the seventh region after Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Liaoning, Chongqing and Tianjin to officially take up cricket, according to a media release from the Asian Cricket Council.
“The Shandong people are well known for their good physical condition in China … the majority of rugby players are from Shandong,” Aminul Islam, the ACC’s development officer for China, said. With cricket being aligned with rugby in the multi-ball games administrative centre in China, the Chinese Cricket Association (CCA) felt a partnership between both bodies to make use of athletes all-year round would be ideal.
”The local education bureau has said that they would organize the local junior students to learn cricket for promotion and then build for high performance,” said CCA secretary-general Liu Rongyao.
The appeal of taking the game to China is not hard to see. "The potential benefits and commercial revenues from [China's] presence in the cricket world are enormous," said Syed A shraful Huq, the ACC’s chief executive. "As soon as China breaks though, I foresee the total global revenues for cricket increasing by 30% to 40%.”
Posted by: Arjun Chaudhuri at May 7, 2008 10:48 AM
If the world cricketing fraternity is looking to bank on China for boosting global revenues for the game, a “slow progress” is not the order of the day. After becoming an ICC member, China took the vow of making it to the ICC World Cup by 2020. Now that seven provinces of the most populous country, which has a more than rich tradition of excellence in sports, has taken to cricket, the country should aim at qualifying for the World Cup faster than its original target. Perhaps the Chinese batsmen will do better than mastering inside edges, commonly known as the Chinese Cut.
Posted by: Oliver Chettle at May 8, 2008 5:11 PM
China does not have a "rich tradition of excellence in sports". On the contrary it hardly has any traditions in sport at all, but recently its authoritarian government has bought its way up the Olympic medal table by ruthlessly focusing on elite talent programmes in sports which offer many Olympic medals.
Posted by: chris roche at June 26, 2008 1:37 PM
china and other countries such as the associate nations should be allowed to play in world cups i know loads of people at the top of cricket don't like this but what if the tournament allowed 32 teams to compete like in the football it would bring more money to cricket and plus in 20 or 30 years time china will be just as good as Australia.
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