Shenyang native Jiang Shuyao first Chinese cricketer to play in England

When the authors of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack update the around the world section for the 2013 edition, they might be inclined to include somewhere in the 1,400-plus pages a mention of Jiang Shuyao - the first Chinese player to compete in the English league.

The 26-year-old Shenyang native made history this summer when he joined Cleethorpes Cricket Club in Lincolnshire and made a dream debut, becoming the club's highest scorer of the season and notching up several match-winning innings.

Trainee sports teacher Jiang arrived in May to bring a hint of oriental exoticism to this windswept Victorian seaside town at the buffeted North Sea end of the industrial Humber estuary on Britain's east coast.

The Asian Cricket Council paid for Jiang's flight and his parents raised RMB50,000 for living expenses after a Cleethorpes member teaching at a university in Shenyang brought him to the club's attention. Jiang had first caught the eye in Hong Kong, playing opening batsman at the Quaid-e-Azam Twenty20 tournament at Mission Road in 2010.

He made an impressive first knock of 73 not out for Cleethorpes and has put a spring in the step of the club with his quiet, can-do attitude and gracious, patient approach to learning the complex ropes of the English game and sticky wickets - something sociologists as well as cricketers have been attempting for well over a century.

Though clearly good enough for Cleethorpes' first team, Jiang - or Shu as he known here - has been welding his willow and donning his trademark red gloves in the seconds. The overseas player rule allows the club to field only one foreign player in the first XI, and they had before his arrival signed South African U19 international Graham Hume.