As the domestic season draws to a close HK Cricket’s selectors have announced the 19 players who’ll form the Hong Kong women’s squad, as they prepare for two key international tournaments later in 2017.
The squad will participate in the ICC Women’s World T20 qualifiers (East Asia Region) in August/September and the East Asia Cup, which will be hosted in Hong Kong. New full-time head coach Richard Waite is looking forward to the challenge.
It’s the first time Hong Kong’s women cricketers have had a dedicated women’s coach and Waite has been impressed with the talent available in his first two months in the job. “We’ve had open sessions to put all players through their paces. During the process of the open sessions, the level of commitment and hard work shown by all players involved has been terrific,” Waite said.
“The belief within the squad is extremely high and we are hungry for success. The next 4 months sees the squad step up their training, and I am extremely thankful with local cricket clubs for showing their support by enabling various fixtures to be played to give them as much game time as possible. This along with a potential training camp in Sri Lanka will put the girls at the peak of their performance and will be a hard side to beat. Our goal is is to qualify for the Women’s T20 World Cup and to win the East Asia Cup, we will work as hard as ever to achieve this goal.”
The team again will again be captained by Mariko Hill, with Waite happy with the balance of experience and youth. “Players like Emma Lai, Kary Chan, and Annie Ho can provide exciting role models for local girls to look up to and give them the passion to go out and play cricket. We have seen that the standard of women’s cricket is constantly being pushed forwards and we must ensure that we have a structure in place that produces a continual stream of talented players, with this in mind we have created an open development squad that will be beneath the national squad, giving us players for the future.”
Hong Kong Women’s Cricket Squad 2017
1. Mariko Hill (Captain)
2. Jenefer Davies (wicket-keeper)
3. Kary Chan
4. Jasmine Titmuss
5. Emma Lai
6. Shanzeen Shahzad
7. Yasmin Daswani
8. Keenu Gill
9. Natural Yip (wkt)
10. Ka Man Chan
11. Ruchita Venkatesh
12. Pull To
13. Mary Henderson
14. Chan Sau Ha
15. Marina Lamplough
16. Annie Ho
Development selections
1. Ashley Hung
2. Lemon Cheung
3. Mehreen Yousaf
Additional reporting photos: HK Cricket