Cricket will make its debut at the Asian Games in Guangzhou, China in November next year, and the eligibility rules that states that only passport holders can play for a nation leave some of the regions cricket teams in somewhat of a selection quandary.
The same rules will be in place for the Asian Games as are in place for the Olympics. Whilst this obviously isn’t a problem for the four Test playing nations or hosts China, many teams in the region are heavily reliant on expatriate players.
Oman have already stated their intention to field a team made up of locals, and the Emirates Cricket Board intends to do the same.
To indicate how much trouble this could be, UAE’s 24 man squad for next month’s ACC Twenty20 includes just four locally born players. That is actually down on the World Cup Qualifier, where out of the 14 players used in the tournament, five were born in the UAE.
With nationality law in the Gulf countries usually ruling out citizenship for anyone not born there, it suggests that a development programme for Emirati cricketers needs to be rolled out pretty quickly. .
One thing not known about the tournament next year is which teams will be taking part. It was originally planned that next month’s World Twenty20 tournament would serve as a qualifier, with teams from the EAP region that compete in the Asian Games, such as Japan, participating. It was planned that three teams would qualify to join the four Test playing nations plus hosts China.
However all mention of this has been removed from the Asian Cricket Council website. “All nation should apply for the participation through their national olympics association to the organizing committee,” an ACC official informed Cricket Nepal.
(Updated version of the story written by Andrew Nixon in CricketEurope.net)