Hong Kong Cricket Sixes could make return in 2024 as officials call on government to improve ailing sports facilities
- Local cricket association chairman Burji Shroff hints at event being held alongside the Hong Kong Blitz
- Shroff says city needs better grounds and practice facilities to keep up with its international competitors
The Hong Kong Cricket Sixes could return this year, but officials said the government needed to invest more in facilities as they outlined plans to rejuvenate the sport in the city.
Since it was last staged in 2017, the competition has fallen victim to a combination of the coronavirus pandemic, and an overcrowded international and domestic cricket calendar.
Burji Shroff, the chairman of the local cricket association, raised the prospect of the sixes happening in conjunction with the Hong Kong Blitz, a T20 tournament that attracted a number of overseas stars when it was played from 2016 to 2018.
The marquee events would spearhead efforts to grow cricket’s popularity and profile in Hong Kong, but Shroff said the city needed better grounds and practice facilities to keep up with its international competitors – and that the governing body needed “government support and one major sponsor” for its sixes ambition to be realised.
“We would then go to the [global governing body] ICC, and request some dates, which generally are in October or November,” Shroff said. “We could have the Blitz a few days before, which would give us an expanded window for quality cricket.”
Shroff said the sixes, which had previously featured some of the sport’s top players, had been “viewed worldwide as one of the best tournaments”, a status he hoped to recapture.
