Along comes a tournament in 4 years that features 13 Associate member countries along with full member Ireland, fighting it out for the opportunity to represent their country in the T20 World Cup, and you have to wonder who are these guys and why hasn’t anyone ever heard of them.
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Well, for starters, you need to start following Associate cricket and the most important part being their non-visibility to the global cricket diaspora due to lack of TV/digital coverage of their games at the sub-regional or regional levels of the qualification pathway tournaments.
For many who do follow Associate cricket, the players from the likes of Scotland, Netherlands, UAE are mostly known. To some extent, even the players from Oman, Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea have been around for a while to have atleast their names ring some bells.
What will change some of the knowledge base in the next three weeks in the Qualifiers is that more than half of the games will be broadcasted globally on TV/Mobile Apps and other digital/social media platforms, so there will be plenty of content to go around to get familiar with the names.
Other than the known names, here are few of the “unknowns” in the qualifiers, who will surely impress one and all with their skill sets and performances in the coming few weeks. The players have been in good form leading upto the qualifiers and also continued their form in the official warm-up matches for their respective countries:
1) Kamau Leverock (Bermuda)
2) Haroon Arshad (Hong Kong)
3) Jason Kila (Papua New Guinea)
4) Ben Stevens (Jersey)
5) Surendran Chandramohan (Singapore)
6) Navneet Dhaliwal (Canada)
7) Dhiren Gondaria (Kenya)
8) Adeleke Oyede (Nigeria)
9) JP Kotze (Namibia)
10) Vincent Adewoye (Nigeria)
11) Okera Bascome (Bermuda)
12) Waheed Ahmed (UAE)
13) Ravinderpal Singh (Canada)
14) Timothy David (Singapore)
15) Aamir Kaleem (Oman)
Did you know that 20 countries have ODI status and 104 countries have T20I status? Or that Scotland will host New Zealand in ODI cricket in 2020? Or, Thailand will play in 2020 Women’s T20 World Cup in Australia? Or, Japan and Nigeria will play in 2020 ICC U19 CWC in South Africa? Most people are missing out on the world of Associate Cricket. Are you one of them? Follow us at www.facebook.com/czarsportzauto or www.twitter.com/Emerging_93 to get all updates and news about the Global Associate Cricket World and how it works outside the Test playing circuit.
