Budding Chinese cricketers to hone their skills in England

LONDON: Six budding cricketers fromChina including three women will get state-of-the-art coaching working underexperienced British coaches. According to report published byChinese news agency Xinhua, these six youngsters, have already shown themselvesto be cricketers of outstanding potential. Their hosts will be acharity called Capital Kids Cricket (CKC), whose dedicated coaches have taughtmore than a million inner-city children the skills and thrills of the game."If these trainees are able to be further developed as cricketers thanks to CKC, it will be a major boost to them, Chinese cricket and, I hope, the game as a whole," said Syed Ashraful Huq, chief executive of the Asian Cricket Council. Zhang Yufei and Li Jian are both all-rounders withinternational experience in Bangladesh and Pakistan, while Song Yangyang is aspecialist batsman and the current Chinese U-19 captain. The threewomen, Huang Zhuo, Zhou Haijie and Yu Miao, have graduated from Shenyang SportsUniversity and have international exposure under their belt. Thecharity's Asian initiative was the brainchild of Shahidul Alam, a formerBangladesh international wicketkeeper who is now CKC's international developmentmanager. "Although this work is outside our usual geographicalterritory, it is a huge privilege to be asked to boost the growth of Chinesecricket," said Haydn Turner, CKC's founder.