The annual Hong Kong Sports Stars Awards are far away, but to save the judges trouble, here's my nomination for the Best Team of the Year in 2009 - the Hong Kong under-19 cricket team.
It's a no-brainer. The teenagers, led by Jamie Atkinson, returned on Tuesday from Toronto after qualifying for the ICC Under-19 World Cup in New Zealand in January. It is a momentous achievement.
What Atkinson and company have done is crossed boundaries and gone where no Hong Kong team have gone before. Cricket isn't in the Olympics and a World Cup is the pinnacle. Even other sports regard a World Cup as bigger than the Olympics. Football for instance. Taken in this context, it is a huge triumph for Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong Cricket Association can now proudly boast of becoming the first team sport from Hong Kong to play in a World Cup. Neither of the two other most popular team sports in this town - soccer and rugby - has even come close to achieving this at any level.
As such, it is worthwhile mentioning the names of the players who created a little piece of history in Toronto. Apart from Atkinson, the others are vice-captain Irfan Ahmed, Niaz Ali, Aizaz Khan, Zuaid Khan, Ashish Ghadia, Aditya Kanthan, Nizkhat Khan, Waqas Barkat, Shivang Baid, Vihash Gope, Gurjant Singh, Asif Khan and Kinchit Shah.
They are the future of Hong Kong cricket. As HKCA president Shahzada Saleem pointed out, most, if not all, of these players are homegrown. Apart from Atkinson, they are all ethnic Pakistanis or Indians. But most were born here and have learned the fundamentals of the game in Hong Kong.
