China Cricket

Cricket was first played in Hong Kong and then Shanghai. The Shanghai Cricket Club was established in 1895 when the British Legation on the Bund had great influence in China. Christopher Studd, educated at Cambridge University with Lord Hawke (Yorkshire CCC and England) and Sir Aubrey Smith (Sussex, England and the Hollywood Cricket Club), played cricket in Shanghai before the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. Mention of the Studd involvement in Shanghai can be found in the 1909 version of The American Cricketer. Recently the Asian Cricket Council has been funding the growth of cricket in China. Coaching support is being provided by coaches from cricketing superpowers such as Australia and India. There are currently around 2,500 registered players, with the aim to have 150,000 by 2020 so the sport can receive Chinese state funding. As with baseball, however, cricket is a niche game which would attract greater interest if it was included in the Olympics. A recent tour of Beijing and Shanghai by the Hollywood Golden Oldies Cricket team based in Los Angeles, found a keen following for cricket at Peking and Fudan Universities. At Peking University the cricket team captain was an excellent batsman, though overall bowling variation and catching the hard ball still required field practice. In Shanghai, at Fudan University which has a century older tradition of cricket than Beijing, the team comprised players from most provinces and as far away as Nepal. Ladies also participated in a combined team game which included members of the HGOCC and Fudan University team playing against each other. This technique for improving cricket skills was first employed in the English Cricket tour of North America in 1859 and is still the most effective way for transferring cricket skills and developing a cricket mentality. China will do well at cricket because the government supports it and the cricketers we played against were ready learners. Contributed by:David Sentance, Cricket in America 1710-2000 (McFarland 2006) who toured China with the Hollywood Golden Oldies team in February 2007. Trackback(0) TrackBack URI for this entry Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Show/Hide comments Write comment Show/Hide comment form Name Email Website Title Comment Write the displayed characters Add Comment Copyright 2007. All Rights Reserved.