Tony Munro

Teams from across South East Asia joined local combinations for the first Vietnam Sixes in Ho Chi Minh City last week. The visitors from Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok and Phnom Penh joined four composite teams made up of players from the local competition in the ten-team event held on February 6-7.

There are seven teams in the Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) league but to provide the visitors with some competition, the 'locals' (who are nearly all expats) were moulded into four combinations named for sponsors - the Vietnam Cricket Association (VCA) Drunken Duck, VCA Tandoor, VCA Phattys and VCA Bar No 5. The move perhaps worked too well, with Ho Chi Minh City teams winning two of three major prizes - Tandoor beat Phattys to win the Sixes Cup, Bar No 5 defeated Singapore's Spirits CC to win the Plate while Misfits CC beat fellow Singaporean club Freehits CC to win the Consolation Final. Angelo Perera, the Tandoor captain and captain of the local Sri Lankan Sports Club team won the award for he most sixes.

Misfits have been regular visitors to HCMC and visiting teams are not unusual, but this was the first time there had been a tournament on this sort of scale, according to Vietnam Cricket Association President, Terry Gordon. "There have been teams come across to Saigon (HCMC) and Hanoi (many years ago) to play one-off games. Nothing like this. We wanted to create a friendly atmosphere, with competitive cricket and free time to enjoy our adopted city."

The tournament was played at Vietnam's only cricket ground, a tree-lined oval at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Saigon South, the HCMC campus of a Melbourne educational facility. Predictably, the pitch consists of a synthetic wicket on a concrete slab.

As with most countries where cricket is virtually unheard of, ground availability remains a core issue. "Every year the university hints that we might not get use of the ground for too much longer - we're competing with other sports - Aussie Rules, rugby, football, frisbee. And each of those sports has attracted locals. Unfortunately we suffer from 'bad-press' as many expats (Americans) and locals just don't understand the rules and think the game goes for too long," warns Gordon.

There's a couple of Australian Vietnamese who play for the Saigon Australian Cricket Club but they are the exception in a land where the culture whose people prefer the indoors in the middle of the day.

Officials of the VCA are all expatriate businessmen whose first priority is to their businesses and and/or employers so the VCA is hoping to forge links with the Asian Cricket Council to expand past their 'foreign' base.

The VCA is also looking to restart the competition in Hanoi which died several years ago and possibly start a club in Da Nang in central Vietnam. There's still the occasional game on matting wickets in Hanoi which the local expats organise and the VCA is hopeful a team from the nation's capital will appear in next year's Sixes.

At this stage the VCA remains an informal entity, a situation which Gordon forsees won't be remedied quickly. "Nothing happens quickly here and the process can be very expensive, particularly because there are no locals playing."

Gordon says securing a ground is crucial to consolidation plans. "We're desperate for assistance from the ACC or another organisation. We really need to have 100% ownership of a ground. But need some benefactors to assist. If RMIT blocked public access to their facility, the cricket comp in Saigon would die overnight. I'm hoping we can draft a business plan in the coming 12 months, and work towards acquiring a suitable piece of land, within 20-30 minutes drive of the City centre."

For more information about cricket in Vietnam, please visit the Vietnam Cricket Association website.

Next week's ICC annual get-together promises to have more than its fair share of politicking, posturing and controversy. But, unless there is a major about-turn, it should also be a watershed for the Associates and Affiliates.

In 2009, income from the ICC's six-year media deal with ESPN-Star, worth over US$1 billion, kicks in, and while the game's big boys will still keep the lion's share, the rest will see substantial increases in their incomes.

Although the ICC draws considerable flak on many fronts, it is quietly committed to promoting the game in as many countries as possible, and it does that by means of a myriad of competitions and initiatives. Most do not warrant much media attention, but they are there and they work.

Until now, the gripe of the smaller countries, and especially those bubbling just underneath the top flight, has been about the inequality of the way in which the game is financed. That was never more apparent than when it came to earnings from last year's World Cup.

Ireland got a flat fee of US$125,000 a year for four years for taking part, and on top of that they received another $50,000 for reaching the Super Eights. However, because of the extra costs involved in their progression, not least because their players are not professional cricketers and their absences from their full-time jobs had to be underwritten, Ireland's success actually left the board out of pocket.

Zimbabwe, on the other hand, turned up, tied with Ireland and never threatened to progress after being thumped by Pakistan and West Indies. For those three matches, Zimbabwe Cricket received US$11 million, their share of the pot as a Full Member.

The top six Associates receive no more than US$500,000 a year - some substantially less - to fund their entire operations. Out of that they have to pay all their cricketing and administration costs. Only those with a low cost of living, such as Kenya, can hope to maintain a professional squad on that kind of money.

The gulf between the haves and have-nots is further widened by the limited sums Associates can earn from sponsorship and media contracts. Zimbabwe can exploit home series against, say, India to carve out lucrative TV deals worth millions, and on the back of that, attract shirt- and other corporate sponsorship. As highlighted by Scotland's failure to secure any TV deal for their forthcoming ODI against England, the Associates struggle to get such income streams.

The new deals will provide a substantial increase for Associates, especially for the countries who are pressing for space at the top table. Until now the share has been roughly equal, rewarding Netherlands and Kenya on par with Thailand and Fiji. The new system will see more demarcation between the top Associates and the rest.

The leading ten could earn as much as US$1.5 million a year from 2009. There will then be an onus on them to professionalise their administrations, but several of them are already well down that route. They will also be more accountable - the ICC does not want a repeat of the mess that came following a spike in Kenya's funding earlier in the decade.

The second-string Associates will also get more - around US$160,000 as a base figure - but then again the demands on them are less. Even Affiliates will receive US$15,000, with the opportunity for more should they make a good enough case. There will also be more cash in the pot for participating and hosting competitions.

There have never been more opportunities for development outside the Full Member countries, but there remain some nagging worries.

The main one is how to bridge the gap between semi and full-blown professionalism. Almost all the Associates rely on dedicated amateurs, both on and off the field. As the number of ICC competitions has increased - and they have to be welcomed - the pressure has begun to tell. Scotland and Ireland particularly have already found players cannot meet all their commitments, and even the increased income will not allow them to employ a full-time squad.

"So much of putting players on full-time retainers depends on how many fixtures we can command," Warren Deutrom, Cricket Ireland's chief executive, said. "At the moment, all we can promise the squad in 2009 is a World Cup qualifying campaign, eight FP Trophy matches, an England game, and probably some Intercontinental Cup matches. Of course, we hope to have more, but can't be sure at the moment.

"Our top players are already plying their trade in county cricket, while others have full-time jobs which they may not wish to give up. The actual number of players that the coach will want to put on a full-time contract, or else the number that even want to have one, may not be that many."

The other quandary is how to get them fixtures. Kenya, widely regarded as the leading Associate, have found it almost impossible to get Full Member countries to visit or host them. As a result they invariably play other Associates. Good for the win-loss ratio, not so clever in providing the kind of experience that no amount of money can buy.

These issues will need to be addressed, but for now the future has never looked so promising beyond the Test world.

The number of people actively participating in cricket outside the Test-playing countries increased 17% in 2007, according to the ICC.

The research, carried out by the ICC's development program, was collated from 33 Associate and 58 Affiliate members. It showed that there were 338,051 male and female players in those countries in 2007, an increase of 49,158 on the previous year. Since 2002, when there were 144,047 participants, there has been a 135% rise.

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Thanh Nien News, a Vietnamese newspaper, has an interesting piece on the English Cricket Club of Saigon (ECCS) which "connects members of the British community in Ho Chi Minh City with one another, preserves culture and does charity work".

The club chairman, Mr. Alan Mossman, said, “We want cricket to be a means of linking our fellow-countrymen and encouraging English expatriates to play our traditional sport. We also want to popularize it to other communities, including Ho Chi Minh City dwellers.”

“At the same time, we call for contributions from the club members, so that we can do some charity work in HCMC, as a way to express our honor and gratitude to the country we are living in.”

All the members strongly support the club's community policies.

The ECCS has grown quite big since it started in 2006.

It celebrated its first anniversary last month with a ceremony and officially made itself known to the public.

On the occasion, the club donated VND10 million to the Wildlife At Risk (WAR) in HCMC.