By Purushottam Kattel
As we are midway through the ACC U-19 Cup cricket tournament, coaches and officials from different participating countries are delighted with the way the Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) has been organizing the tournament till date and are spellbound by the ‘wonderful’ cricketing weather as well as grounds and pitches.
Among themselves, however, the officials have a big debate over the issue of nationality of the players playing from respective countries. The Asian Cricket Council (ACC) is liberal towards the player’s nationality and allow a player from any part of the world to represent any country in these sorts of tournament. This is why, for example, there is only one indigenous Qatari playing from Qatar as rest of the players are either from Pakistan or India. Almost all participants excluding Nepal, Iran and the Maldives reportedly boasts of foreign players in this tournament.
Qatar’s Sri Lankan coach Aruna De Silva, who is also the joint secretary of the development program of Qatar Cricket Association, advocates the inclusion of the foreign players. “If Kevin Peterson and former captain Nassir Hussain can play from England, why not our boys who represent the expatriate community,” asks De Silva, who himself is living in Qatar for the last 17 years.
“The ACC has been grooming these players for the last five and if they are not allowed to play, there will be only Nepal, Iran and the Maldives playing these tournaments. The genuine concern in these sort of age-group tournaments is players’ age and the ACC has been doing an excellent job for the last two years as players’ x-rays are being sampled,” he adds.
On the other hand, Hossein Ali Salimian, chief of Iran Cricket Committee and a diplomat, is deeply concerned with the issue of nationality. “Allowing Indian, Sir Lankan and Pakistani cricketers, these countries are not developing their own cricket,” the soft-spoken Irani charges.
Iran got the ACC affiliation in 2002 and played its first major tournament early this year in U-15 ACC Trophy. According to him, there is a tremendous cricketing atmosphere in Iran and a lot of grounds are being constructed at different places where weather varies.
“But if we hire players from other country, how is it possible to groom our own cricketers,” he asks adding that the ACC has to make a very quick decision regarding nationality of players, if it really wants to develop cricket all over Asia.
“I just suggest them (the countries) to invest the money they pay for foreign players to develop their own country’s cricket. In this regard, I liked Nepal policy which is akin to Iran,” he says. In Iran, like Nepal, foreign players are allowed in the cash-prize tournaments but not even in domestic national leagues.
However, both of them agree that there should be a gradual change instead of a prompt decision from ACC. “Expatriates should get chance to play and ACC should make a gradual change regarding the compulsion of fielding indigenous players,” both of them agree.
As published in The Kathmandu Post on Nov 13.