Waiting For Shane

  • Share
  • Read Later

Anyone who doubts the longevity of British culture in Hong Kong need only have turned up at the recent launch of the 2007 Hong Kong Cricket Sixes to see that British culture isn’t merely alive and well—it’s bursting out of its navy blue suit and spraying your face with pastry crumbs.
My colleague Ishaan and I had been lured to a function room of the Hong Kong Cricket Club, perched high in the Wong Nei Chung Gap, on the promise of meeting “the biggest [cricket] name of all in recent times.” One can lapse into tedious scholasticism on the topic of who that is, but after vibing the word on the, er, “streets,” I’d brought along a copy of Shane Warne: My Illustrated Career for autographing, feeling reasonably certain it would be he.
But, of course, it wasn’t the stallion of spin bowling. It wasn’t Sachin Tendulkar or Brian Lara. It was even Ian Botham. There was no cricketer, because of some nonsense to do with visas. Instead, there was a disdainful-looking Eurasian chick at reception, who told us that she didn’t really “do” reception or business cards*. There were paternalistic officials and sponsors, disreputable-looking members of the Fourth Estate, plus a group of alarmingly young girls modeling this year’s team shirts and lots of barely legal leg. They stood opposite the suits and the salivating press corps in a ghastly juxtaposition of vitality and corruption. On this side, fairness and clear skin; on the other, bad backs and man-boobs, bald patches and bad ties. In fact, it sent me into existentialist despair, and over to a table bearing the kind of spread—finger sandwiches, spring rolls, sausage rolls—that you really only ever see at members’ clubs.
Having gorged the existentialism away, I was free to look around the room and notice that the only Chinese faces in the place belonged to the waiters, the guys operating the A/V, and a faintly baffled sports official, who had come to give the Sixes his OK. I point this out not because Hong Kong’s cricket establishment hasn’t made efforts to bring the game to Chinese people. It has—strenuous ones. It’s just that Chinese people don’t seem to be into it (well, it does seem sort of ridiculous to be into a game that is known in Cantonese by the beautifully patronizing name of “wood ball.”). But I love cricket and I want my peeps to love it too. With its calculation and duplicity and patient strategies, cricket is such a Chinese game. If only some PRC sports tsar would set a five-year plan—if only some Hong Kong official would.
There is a great cricketing connection to capitalize on. The Hong Kong Sixes is the richest cricket tournament in the world (in terms of prize money per game). And the Hong Kong XI, has the honor, I believe, of making the second highest one-day score ever: 422 against Myanmar in the 2006 ACC trophy—a score made all the more delicious by the fact that we bowled Myanmar all out for 20 (for more like this, see Peter Hall’s triumphant 150 Years of Cricket in Hong Kong). But the chance of fielding a Chinese, or mostly Chinese team, is about as remote as running into Shane Warne in the Cricket Club bar. A pity.
(*This turned out to be the TV presenter Asha Gill, who was the tournament MC and certainly not working on reception. Our apologies, Asha.)