by Tim Wigmore
Beneath worthy ideals of charity was more hard-nosed pragmatism. Cricket in China, even as a marginal sport, meant cash. Lots of cash. ‘As soon as China breaks through,’ declared the then ACC chief executive Syed Ashraful Huq, ‘I foresee the total global revenues for cricket increasing by up to 30 to 40 per cent.’
How he arrived at the figure was never really clear but it looked good on press releases. Sports business ‘experts’ like the Australian Ian McCubbin were quoted in international newspapers talking up the prospects for cricket in China. Like India, China has a mammoth and growing middle-class population. Alongside a clutch of billionaires and masses of people living in poverty. In the emerging classes, though, riches reside and these skin-deep similarities between the nations seemed enough to convince many of cricket’s commercial potential in China.
China is indeed a tantalising prospect that could fix cricket’s hopelessly lopsided finances. Belying the sport’s global pretensions, wealth is concentrated in the Big Three nations. The BCCI’s justification for the 2014 power-grab was simple: Since the Indian market bankrolls the sport – 80 per cent of cricket’s global revenue comes from the Indian market – they should control it too.
If the China dream were ever to become a reality it would free up the economics and dilute India’s dominance. It would allow for a true governance revolution. ‘If just ten per cent of China’s population played, that would be 100 million new fans,’ said Shahriar Khan (no relation to Shaharyar Khan mentioned on page 104) of the ACC. The Woolf Report, commissioned by the ICC in 2011 to investigate the way the game was governed, concluded that an independent board should run the game and a stronger role be granted to non-Test-playing countries. That the precise opposite has happened is entirely due to the structure of the game’s economics.
Mei Chun Hua had barely played cricket before she captained China. It was 2007 and her team had travelled to Malaysia for the Asia Cup. She had been introduced to the game at university the previous year and was soon discovered by Rashid Khan, China’s coach, who’d been scouting the country for players. ‘When he saw me bowl for the first time he said, “This is the girl we need!”’ Mei recalled in 2013. ‘He saw my personality and told me I was a leader for our team.’
Mei was an all-round sportswoman. Her entry into the specialist Shenyang Sports University came from her prowess in javelin throwing, but the transition to cricket made her an international-class athlete.
Success for Mei and success for China was immediate. China won their opening fixture, against Singapore, with Mei scoring an unbeaten 26 and taking three wickets. Her team then went on to beat the UAE, a well-established associate nation, en route to the semi-final where they lost to Nepal. ‘We knew so little about cricket and had no experience,’ she said. ‘So to reach the semi-final was good but we should have played better.’
From that early success China women have continued to improve. They made the semi-final of the 2010 Asian Games, losing only to Bangladesh, and have since reached the final of the Asia Twenty20 tournament three times. It’s not a crowded field but the women are among the best non-Test nations in Asia.
Mei is also an example of how the development strategy can work. Her introduction to cricket came from a university teacher who had attended a one-off training day with ACC development officer Aminul Islam, and returned with a bag full of ACC-funded kit and brimful of intent. As Mei conceded her school teacher did not really know the game, but he was still able to enthuse a few students to take it up.
Soon after, the touring national coaching set-up identified Mei’s talent and trained her more seriously. She was then invited to Shanghai where she was introduced, through the Shanghai Cricket Association, to the Shanghai Cricket Club and the group of expats who could further enhance her game. It was enough to translate her talent into results.
The comparative success of the women compared to the men in part reflected the attitude towards women’s cricket that still prevailed in many Asian cricketing countries. It also hinted at a divide in Chinese society.
Cricket is an explicitly alien presence in China. According to those involved in the game in China, women, rather than men, are more willing to embrace the unfamiliar. Partly it’s out of necessity. China’s welcoming of global capitalism has come from a generally female workforce in textile and manufacturing production. It is women workers driving China’s development story and they who have had to break with old institutions and practices. In what remains a paternalist society, women also have more to gain from pursuing change.
Mei’s story also speaks to the obstacles facing cricket. She was forced into retirement in 2011, aged just 26, as her studies were over and there was no career to be made in the game. She now works full-time in teaching, and despite being a qualified coach the has little opportunity to pursue the sport.
There is no meaningful recreational cricket in most of China. The two leagues that exist – in Shanghai and Guangzhou – are both expat-run, largely male and despite efforts to develop links with local schools and universities, do not offer enough of a chance for grassroots development. The bug has bitten, though, and Mei is still obsessed with the game. She dedicated her one week of annual leave last year to watching China women in the Asia Cup. ‘I really wish the team to go well,’ she said. ‘So I keep following them.’
Since her retirement, and the team’s continued success on the international stage, more resources are being put into women’s cricket. In 2014 the women’s team went on a two-month tour to New Zealand, funded by the Shandong provincial government, and were sponsored to tour England as part of the preparations for the Asian Games held in South Korea in September. The sports university in Shenyang is now offering pre-graduate diplomas, alongside undergraduate and masters degrees, which allows them to take 16-year-olds and give them a decade in the game. Though not perfect it is a useful way of delaying the inevitable moment when real life must take over.
I caught a glimpse of live Chinese cricket during the women’s tour to England in July 2014. Playing on the nursery ground at Lord’s against an invitational MCC XI, they lost, but it was their only defeat all tour. What struck initially was the noise. China women were the loudest cricket team I’ve heard. There was no sledging as such, just constant, well-drilled encouragement. ‘Jayou’ (literally, ‘add oil’) was one familiar shout. The bowling and fielding was intensely well organised as players walked in during every run-up, clapped every ball, backed up every throw and skipped quickly between overs.
Such textbook skills made China a strong fielding side but proved part of their weakness as a batting team. All upright elbows and full bat faces, they were technically strong but outdated. Coaches in China argue that this technical proficiency separates them from other fledgling sides and has underpinned their relative success. Yet the predominance of the limited-overs format, alloyed to the physical strength of professionals in the full member nations, has made women’s cricket a fast-paced sport at the highest level.
Claire Taylor, the great England batsman, who was playing for MCC against China, forged her prolific batting career on a bottom-handed technique drawn from her hockey-playing days. To win short-form games and chase large totals, women cricketers especially needed to embrace unorthodoxy and find ways to muscle boundaries.
China regularly beats fellow affiliate nations during the group stages of tournaments, only to lose heavily to teams like Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. It might be that China’s textbook approach is hindering their jump to the next level. It is actually a trait that captures a deeper problem with cricket’s development in China. In whatever small way China hastried to develop cricket, it has been an elite project. Ex-Test players like Aminul, or Rashid Khan are hired as coaches instead of group organisers that might be more suited to the kind of work needed in Chinese cricket at this stage.
Even domestic matches are played to international standard rules which judge wides harshly and end up slowing down the game. Zhang Tian has been known to
describe China’s approach to cricket as ‘fostering the elite-level game’ which is fine in theory, but as cricket-obsessed British expat Matt Smith put it simply, ‘There is no elite cricket in China.’
It was when he’d sat down that Matt Smith realised how familiar the faces felt. He’d been in China for eight years, having left Lincolnshire to teach English at Shenyang Aerospace University. Five years ago he’d started a cricket team at his university and in the time since he’d become a central figure in China’s fledgling cricket story. At a dinner in Shanghai celebrating the 2014 edition of the national cricket championships he noticed that China had developed something of its own cricket establishment.
The tournament is an annual event that started eight years ago made up of primary school, middle school and university sides. For many teams it is the only proper cricket played all year. The university and middle school teams are where the national squads are drawn from and the 2014 edition had six women’s and men’s sides. The core group of teams – though not the players – have remained largely unchanged for the past seven or eight years and so have the administrators, umpires and scorers.
At the dinner was Ge Tao, who would be coaching the national squads in a couple of weeks and Dr Liu, who’s written cricket’s only Mandarin coaching manual along with a clutch of others Smith recognised. ‘I’ve got to know them,’ said Smith. ‘We see each other every year, probably get drunk once, commiserate, encourage and sweat profusely. Shanghai in July and August is no place for mad dogs.’
This emerging cricketing community in China was a promising sign but, for Smith, an all-too-rare beacon of hope. Despite his years in China he remains the kind of pessimistic Englishman authors write cliches about. He’d fallen out of love with cricket, until one day deciding to try and introduce the game to some of his students. The struggle to make cricket legible to people who lacked even the most basic grasp of its core concepts forced him to reflect on the sport. ‘It was that effort to really communicate the game which made me really think about cricket and my affection for it grew again,’ Smith said.
Smith’s involvement in Chinese cricket is entirely independent. Given no financial or administrative support from any of the game’s authorities, and with no charity or company to shill, his is an amateur mission fuelled by love. It gives him a more pragmatic perspective than many who prefer the grand stories of potential. ‘The game has made next to no impression in China,’ said Smith. ‘It’s difficult to appreciate how alien the sport is. Even if you don’t follow sport or cricket in England you will have some basic idea of the shape of the game. You don’t have that here. You could throw all the money in the world at cricket in China and it wouldn’t make a difference.’
Smith described how even after an introductory session from an international coach, well-respected sports teachers would return to his university asking ‘so the bowler and batter are on the same team are they?’ The complete miscommunication between those familiar with cricket and the many people in China who don’t know the game, is what Smith dedicates hours of his spare time to tackling. ‘It’s taken me seven years but I’m beginning to understand how to explain cricket and anchor it in Chinese culture.
‘It’s by looking at the underlying ideas of cricket. So if table tennis is a duel, football might be a pitched battle, but cricket is a siege. Once you understand it, it’s obvious. Cricket is a siege-type situation and one man is there to defend his castle from the attacking bowlers and fielders. We even talk about “getting castled”, and that is something Chinese people can easily understand.
‘I think what’s happened is people have tried to explain too much in far too much detail.’
Smith is convinced that the cadence of the game would appeal to the Chinese psyche and has seen how years of pushing the sport in his own university has helped establish it as one of the main cricketing centres in China. During the summer he holds weekly coaching sessions and keeps in regular contact with ACC development officer Aminul Islam, and local coach Ge Tao. His devotion to the cause also helped him take Jiang Shuyao to his Lincolnshire cricket club Cleethorpes as an overseas player in 2012.
Smith had seen Jiang playing for Shenyang Sports University against the Aerospace University and by then Jiang was probably the best player in China. Smith paid the travel costs (later reimbursed by the ACC) and Jiang’s family put up nearly £5,000 for him to have six months in England, playing for the Cleethorpes second XI only because first-team overseas players had to have had first-class experience.
Jiang – who named himself ‘Jonty’ in light of his fielding prowess – impressed, making 72 not out in his first game and ending the season with 776 runs at 31.04.
‘English beer I liked,’ he said. ‘The food? Hmm. Less.’ Prices were also a worry. By the end of the season he said, ‘I have spent 30,000 RMB since I have been here – that’s a year’s wage for my parents and most Chinese.’
Beyond a liking for beer and distaste for English food and prices, Jiang is clear how the time in England enhanced both his technique and broader understanding of cricket’s culture. Yet he has barely had a chance to prove this on the field for China since.
The trouble for Jiang, and the men’s side more broadly, is that their lack of success means they don’t have many opportunities to play international cricket. Until the 2014 Asian Games Jiang’s last international match was in 2012, ending ingloriously with a 13-ball duck as China finished sixth out of seven teams in the ACC Trophy Challenge.
That China did not have a chance to play any cricket for two years between 2012 and 2014 is testament to the vagaries of affiliate cricket organisation and the lack of interest from cricket’s authorities. With no clarity over scheduling of tournaments and limited scope for playing against leading teams with big potential TV audiences, it is difficult to generate sponsorship. ‘We get our shirts paid for,’ said CCA’s Zhang Tian, ‘but there is no other interest for cricket by private companies.’
The Asian Cricket Council was an organisation born of frustration and ambition. Indian officials had been denied a fair share of complimentary tickets to watch their country’s 1983 World Cup miracle win against the West Indies at Lord’s, as the MCC member stands were stuffed with the familiar pink faces instead. On-field triumph demanded off-field change and emboldened by the success of Kapil Dev’s team the Asian countries – India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Singapore – established a formal Asian bloc, the Asian Cricket Conference, to push their case for a greater say in how the game was run.
It is ironic now that in achieving its goal, the ACC could well now die off. When it was set up the ACC was not a part of the ICC but was an outsider, lobbying organisation. It aimed not just to give Asian countries enough complimentary World Cup tickets, but the chance to host the entire tournament itself. Raging against the myopia of the game, it was an internationalist body. Duly, the 1987 World Cup was held in India and Pakistan and cricket’s eastward march began.
Even as India’s administrative hold strengthened through the 1990s, the ACC was still pushing for a more inclusive game. The organisation, based in Malaysia (though ‘incorporated in the offshore island of Labuan’), was also a useful outpost for ambitious administrators. IS Bindra, Jagmohan Dalmiya, Sharad Pawar and N. Srinivasan are among recent history’s most powerful cricket administrators and have all headed the organisation at varying points in between holding top positions in the BCCI and ICC. Dalmiya was for a time a genuine internationalist, and it was during his stint in charge from 2004 to the end of 2005 that the ACC made a significant push for cricket in China.
‘It was being left to countries to drag themselves up to world level before they were given recognition,’ he said when ACC chairman. ‘It should be the other way round. We should recruit other countries and help them develop.’
As such the ACC channelled ICC funds among members in the region, but also organised its own tournament to generate development funds. ‘Every two years we’re able to
present the Asia Cup, usually in one of the full member countries and that generates funds through broadcast right sales,’ says John Cribbin, vice-president of the ACC in 2014.
‘Obviously the full members are paid for participation in the event but also a significant amount, which has grown over the years, is allocated for development to supplement ICC funds. In the last round around £2m was designated for development.’
Whether resources could have been better spent remains a relevant question. Certainly one England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) official told me, ‘Money allocated through the ACC doesn’t seem to get very far.’
It is perhaps that suspicion that threatened the future of the ACC when the Big Three formalised their takeover. England were aware that a European lobby made up of a single Test playing country lacked the muscle of an Asian competitor. Australia too felt there was no need to push Asian interests any further. The BCCI, and accordingly the ICC, whose chairman N. Srinivasan also chairs the financial committee of the ACC, were happy to reduce the scope of the organisation.
In August 2014 it emerged that the organisation would focus more on where cricket was already established. Nepal and Afghanistan had qualified for the 2014 World Twenty20 and were the kind of development cases the ACC could support. China, less so. As with the other changes instigated by the Big Three takeover, the associate and affiliate nations had little idea or no say in the move. Instead a general wish to cull administrative excess was offered. Cricket is indeed overburdened with administrators, but as always with ‘efficiency’ changes the powerful seemed to escape the cut.