Played over four Sundays in the Twenty20 format, the cricket series brings together 60 of Hong Kong’s best cricketers to select 20 players for the national representative squad.
Hong Kong Cricket Association (HKCA) head coach Charlie Burke was the instigator of the new series after being appointed to the position a little over two months ago. Needing to see the quality of the cricketers he has to choose from, he struck upon the idea of holding a high-scoring, short format summer tournament—something that had never been attempted in Hong Kong before.
“We’ve got the Elite Player Series starting today. It’s the first time we have run this tournament. Summer isn’t usually when cricket is played here in Hong Kong,” Burke told NTDTV last Sunday as the Victory defeated the Stormers, while the Peaks defeated the Dragons.
“There will be eight matches in the men’s and two in the women’s in The Epoch Times Elite Player Series and that will be all Twenty20 [cricket format]. That will include the final,” said the Australian-born coach.
“Each team will play four games. It’s a good opportunity and there’s no excuse for the players to say they didn’t get an opportunity because they will. They’ve got four games to put their hands up to be noticed for selection,” Burke said.
He explained that cricket in Hong Kong has “been around for over 130 years,” and discussed how the game had been embraced further by the local Chinese community while describing two different formats.
“It’s a great game for people to play because it’s such a team sport and that’s really important. I think it goes well with the culture in Hong Kong as well—working with one another and all those sorts of good life experiences.
“They love the Twenty20 cricket, which is the shorter version that we will be playing out here in the next four weeks. Twenty20 cricket is only three hours and a game’s done. The other format we play is 50-over cricket, which is a full day. That’s about six and half hours.
“I think Twenty20 cricket has especially caught on with the local Chinese people.”
Underpinning the importance of the current series, the next major cricket event for Hong Kong is the Asian Games in November that is also played in the same Twenty20 format.
Road to the World Cup
From a world cricket perspective, the International Cricket Council World Cricket League (ICC WCL) Division Three, played in the 50-over format, will be held in January 2011.
Hosted by Hong Kong (ranked No. 24 in the world), it will feature USA (ranked No. 30) and other countries such as Holland, Papua New Guinea, Oman, and Nepal.
The leading two nations from that tournament will be elevated to the ICC WCL Division Two. The top four teams from Division Two (that will be decided in a later tournament) will then qualify to play in the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup.
So, selection to the HKCA national squad during The Epoch Times Elite Player Series carries great significance to the success of cricket in Hong Kong and their long-term World Cup ambitions.
“One of the reasons that we are running this tournament is because we think it’s got a purpose,” Burke said. “We wouldn’t invest in it and get people like The Epoch Times that are sponsoring it [behind us].
“We wouldn’t put our name amongst these things if we didn’t think there was a purpose or we didn’t think we would be able to achieve the goals. I think we certainly will.”
