Hong Kong at full strength for ACC Women’s Emerging Teams Asia Cup as new coach takes helm
- Andy Cottam will take charge of side for first time as head coach, in games against A teams from India, Pakistan and Thailand
- A former first class cricketer, Cottam comes to Hong Kong from Bangladesh, where he was high performance manager at national sports institute
Hong Kong will be at full strength for the ACC Women’s Emerging Teams Asia Cup this month, with six players returning to the squad and a new coach at the helm.
Andy Cottam will take charge of the side for the first time as head coach, in games against A teams from India, Pakistan and Thailand. The other group will consist of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka A teams, United Arab Emirates and Malaysia.
A former first class cricketer, Cottam comes to Hong Kong from Bangladesh, where he was high performance manager at the country’s national sports institute.
He has also served as national coach of Indonesia’s men’s and women’s teams, and has experience of coaching in England and Australia.
The 49-year-old comes in with Hong Kong having made a host of changes to the squad that won the East Asian Cup last month.
Vice-captain Natasha Miles returns to the side, along with Elysa Hubbard, Iqra Sahar, Mariko Hill, Marina Lamplough and Ruchitha Venkatesh.
Hong Kong’s first game is against India on June 13 at Mission Road, with Sri Lanka taking on UAE in the opening match of the tournament the day before.
Cottam’s arrival coincides with that of men’s head coach Simon Willis, who has now relocated to the city on a permanent basis after his appointment earlier this year, and with two other changes to the Cricket Hong Kong set-up.
Former high performance general manager Mark Farmer will step into the role of youth pathway coach.
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In a statement, CHK said that Farmer’s change in role was designed to “bridge the gap between club cricket and domestic cricket, heading into elite level and international cricket”.
Chris Pickett, meanwhile, has been reappointed into an expanded role as head of performance analysis, “creating a set up that provides extensive analytics across all of Hong Kong’s representative teams”.
Jawaid Iqbal will take on the role of Willis’ assistant coach, while Ghulam Saqlian will support Cottam while also acting as a coach to the youth teams.
Burji Shroff, the CHK chairman welcomed the arrival of the new appointments and said the busy time ahead, with men’s and women’s teams competing at the Asian Games, World Cup qualification and Asia Cup qualification meant it had been time to “introduce new resources into our coaching team”.
