China-India relations take another pitch
By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - While Spain's Real Madrid and England's Manchester United see China
as an immense future market for football, some see vast potential there for
another huge sport in Asia, cricket.
The sport was banned for years by China's communist rulers as symbolic of
bourgeois Western values. Now the International Cricket Council (ICC), is
pushing the development of cricket at all levels in the country, especially in
schools. Officials from the ICC say China will one day be a leading
cricket-playing nation.
A race is now brewing between India and Pakistan - two cricket-crazy countries
- to capture a possibly huge market in China. Some even see the sport as way to
calm Sino-Indian political tensions.
Interest in China, where cricket is much less popular than
basketball, football, ping-pong or tennis, has been spurred by recent evolution
of the sport. Traditionally played in "Test" matches that can last for up to
five days, a fast and furious version has been developed that is concluded
within a matter of hours. The shortened version of the game is called Twenty20,
for the 20 six-ball overs that each side bowls.
Promoters of the game see vast marketing potential in advertising, sponsorships
and television rights for a nation of a billion-plus people. Syed Ashraful Huq,
chief executive of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC), has said that China's entry
into world-class cricket could boost the total global revenues for the game by
30% to 40%.
The ICC's push in China has led to the inclusion of cricket for the first time
at the Asian Games next year in Guangzhou, China, a move backed by India and
Pakistan. The immensely popular Twenty20 version will be played at the November
2010 games, in male and female categories.
India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh - all eligible to play Test matches -
have automatically qualified for the games, along with host China. Three more
slots will be occupied via qualifiers from the rest of Asia.
Observers say that, in the long-term, the vast funding available to China for
sports infrastructure and training could easily be channeled into creating an
array of good-quality cricketers who could one day play in the world's top
tournaments.
The ICC has named former a Pakistan international as coach of the Chinese men's
team, while an ex-Indian international is in charge of the women's team. The
China Cricket Association has said that the country aims to qualify for the
2019 cricket World Cup in England.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), one of the richest private
sports bodies in the world - television rights for the Indian Premier League
last year raised some US$1 billion for the BCCI - has been supplying China with
equipment, basic facilities and qualified coaches. As if continuing their
on-pitch rivalry to behind-the-scenes competition in China, the Pakistan
Cricket Board (PCB) director general, Javed Miandad, a top batsman who played
124 Tests for Pakistan said in April this year he said he had accepted an
invitation from the Chinese Cricket Association to be their adviser.
Miandad has said he fears the PCB is not doing enough to make sure Pakistan
does not lose out on the Chinese market to India, according to the Press Trust
Of India. "Miandad is worried ... that other Asian countries like India and
Bangladesh will establish a stronghold in the Chinese market," a source told
the newspaper.
Aminul Islam, a retired Bangladeshi batsman, has been quoted by news agency
Agence France-Presse as saying that China stands a good chance of competing
with the world's top teams, Australia and India within the next 10 years.
"When I first went there three years ago, there were only a few people who knew
what cricket was and they brushed it off as a very slow game," said Islam, a
development officer for the ACC. "This year, 103 schools and six universities
took part in regional competitions. They have started loving the sport."
For years, the only "chinaman" involved in cricket was a type of bowling
delivery. The chinaman is a delivery for left-arm wrist spinners which mimics
the right-arm leg spinner's googly - a ball that is difficult to read. The term
"chinaman" was reportedly first used in 1933, when Ellis "Puss" Achong, a West
Indian spin bowler with Chinese ancestry, took the wicket of England's Walter
Robins, who apparently muttered: "Fancy being done by a bloody Chinaman."
The first recorded cricket match in China was held in 1858, between a team of
officers from the HMS Highflyer and a Shanghai XI, and Shanghai had a
cricket ground, in the middle of a racecourse, by 1863.
The international community kept the game alive until the communist revolution
in 1949, and it didn't stir again until after Deng Xiaoping opened China's
doors to the outside world in the late 1970s.
Teams from Hong Kong started to visit in the 1980s, and by the late 1990s,
enthusiasts had managed to stage an international six-a-side tournament that is
now held annually in Shanghai and attracts some well-known international names,
mostly from Australia.
Not all are happy with the ICC's plans. West Indies team manager Joel Garner
has said that despite test cricket in his home struggling for money, cricket
authorities would rather invest in developing Twenty20 in China. Garner is
annoyed with plans to use money raised at next year's ICC World Twenty20 in the
West Indies to develop cricket in places such as China.
Observers say cricket could create a cultural affinity between Indians and the
Chinese, bridging some of the political and linguistic divides and suspicions
that hark back to 1962, when the two countries fought a brief war.
Sino-Indian tension are again high now over claims of repeated Chinese military
incursions along the Indo-China border, tussles to exercise influence over the
Indian Ocean and the recent visit by the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama,
to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, a disputed area controlled by India.
And after China? The rest of the world beckons for the sport - even in
Afghanistan, despite decades of internal conflict and invasion. The national
cricket team there has already surpassed all expectations in recent years,
ascending to the ACC's elite division and almost qualifying for the 2011 World
Cup in South Africa.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist. He can be reached
at sidsri@yahoo.com)
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