Incheon City in South Korea is gearing up to host the 17th Asian Games from September 19 to October 4 in 2014 and the Korean Cricket Association (KCA) has launched an ambitious project of preparing Korean national women’s team for the mega event.
And, Nepal has reason to feel proud in this initiative since the KCA has chosen Nepal to give basic cricket lesson to its wanna-be lady cricketers.
A Korean team, including 11 players, has arrived in Kathmandu early this week and six other girls are arriving in Kathmandu on Friday.
“We are hosting Asian Games in 2014 and we want to prepare ladies team by then,” said Nasir Khan, the coach and administrator of the Incheon Cricket Association, a regional association under KCA.
Korea called up interested athletes and selected 23 women for the training camp to prepare the women’s national cricket team.
“Some of the players are university students and school teachers while some are players of baseball, swimming and softball,” said Khan. “We have started teaching them basic cricket since last one and half months,” he added.
As IncheonCity has very cold weather and does not have facility of natural turf wickets, KCA chose Nepal to run training camp. According to Khan, they will run training camp in Nepal for a month period. Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) has provided coaches — Raju Basnyat, Kalam Ali and Nira Rajopadhyaya — to teach the Korean girls along with other technical support.
“Nepal has been growing as a cricket country. Before coming here, we came to know there are skillful coaches like Nira to teach basics to our girls. We thought Nepal would be the best option to teach basics,” said Khan. “Meanwhile, we have good relation with Nepal Olympic Committee and Cricket Association of Nepal,” he added.
Song Seung Min, 20-year-old student of GacheonUniversity, is one of the players in the training camp. “I knew nothing when I first heard about the cricket some months ago but after going through the training, I’m interested in it,” said Song, who used to play baseball as a pitcher with her friends.
Song and her friends have started aiming high though she is yet to learn basics about cricket. “We want bronze medal in the Asian Games,” said Song without any hesitation.
Nepali coach Nira Rajopadhyaya, also the former captain of Nepal women’s team, found Korean girls hard working. “They are learning basics. We are teaching them basic techniques but they are quick to learn,” said Rajopadhyaya. “They are doing hard works and if they keep it up, they will progress soon,” she added.
After having basic cricket lesson from Nepal, the Koreans are planning to run training camps in Incheon. “We are trying to get some support from government and planning to call Nepali women’s team for practice matches before the Asian Games,” said Khan, who migrated to Korea from Lahore, Pakistan some 20 years ago and started playing cricket in Korea since then.
Nepal has almost similar story of stepping in women’s cricket. Cricketing Region No 5 (Nepalgunj) had taken the initiative in 2006 by assembling athletes from different other games. International Cricket Council (ICC) encouraged the initiative by giving away ICC Global Award then. Nepal had finished the ACC Women’s Trophy 2007 as runner-up in its first international participation in women’s cricket. It has been garnering successes at the international level in the women’s cricket since then.
(As reported to REPUBLICA)
A Korean girl learns batting.