As Ed alluded to in a previous post, there has been a little flurry of mentions of Hong Kong cricket on cricinfo and Patrick Kidd's Line and Length blog. For the past 22 months Hong Kong has been my home and for 21.5 of those Hong Kong University CC has been my cricket club. Since the pool of players here in HK is small, I reckon I've played either with or against the vast majority of the HK squad and from my lowly point of view from way down the cricketing ability ladder, they look very good indeed. One of them, Hussain Butt is the best player I've ever played with (which leads to a potential Cricket Burble discussion - who's the best player you have ever had on your side?) - the amount of time he appears to have to play the ball is insulting to fast bowlers everywhere. He hit the headlines a few years ago for hitting 311* in 35-over match, with 36 sixes. I'm just glad he's on my side!Lack of suitable space (anything that is not a mountain or sea probably already has an apartment block on it) restricts to Hong Kong to having just six grounds, of which only two, the wealthy HKCC and Kowloon CC, have natural pitches. Even the grounds themselves are restricted - HKU has a straight boundary of some 40 yards - and this means the cricket played is different to that back home. The first over of the first match I played went for 24 (and no, I wasn't bowling). The rewards for an aggressive shot are magnified - middle it and you get six, mistime it slightly and you probably have six anyway. Consequently, 'horrible' swipes across the line are valuable shots. It was noticeable when we hosted a touring English team last summer that their techniques were almost too good - while they patted a good length ball back the bowler or caressed a half-volley through the covers flawlessly along the ground for two, a local player would wind up and try to smack the thing into orbit. In the end, we won (against a team who were roughly the same standard as us) by 170 runs. Of course, the fact that they were all monstrously hung over from the previous night's shenanigans in Wanchai probably worked to our advantage!
PS - tickets for the Hong Kong Sixes in November are available this week. If you want a cheaper version of the Hong Kong Sevens with 100% less rugby and infinity% more cricket, then look no further!
What I don't understand is the make-up of the Hong Kong team. In the news story you linked to about the 30odd sixes, Butt is described as a Pakistani. So if that's the case, what's he doing playing for Hong Kong?
ReplyDeletePlaying in Hong Kong sounds like playing at Chenies & Latymer in the Thames Valley league!
Most famous player I've played with? Hmmm, not sure. Just missed out on playing with Allan Lamb - he was so poor (averaging 7 from memory) that he didn't play past the first few games of the season when he played for us, and by the time I got to play (later in the summer as I was still school age and couldn't play until the school term was finished), he'd given up. From 9 in the order I finished with a better average than he did for that season which I suppose is a mini claim to fame (but then nearly everyone in the team did!).
So with that near miss not counted I'd have to say Owais Shah.
swipes across the line are always valuable shots!!
ReplyDeleteI guess that Hussain was born in Pakistan, moved to Hong Kong and became a permanent resident here, which takes 7 years, I think. He probably keeps his Pakistani passport as well as his HKID.
ReplyDeleteSo there's your chance to play international cricket - live in HK for 7 years and you too can travel to Tanzania to play Fiji :) I'm moving to Andorra to break into the team there...
I suppose it's a bit hypocritical for an Englishman to criticise the 7 year rule given that we've benefited from the likes of the aforementioned Allan Lamb, Graeme Hick, Kevin Pietersen etc. But it would be interesting to know how many of the Hong Kong team are "home grown"....
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