There is considerable interest in cricket in Beijing and has been for sometime. There is the Peking Cricket Club that was playing regular matches in the 1980s and the 1990s, mainly inter-Embassy cricket.

There was a regular international Sixes in Beijing, the last being in 1996 that included the likes of Clive Rice. The mantle for the Sixes has passed to Shanghai who now organise a terrific competition each year, of which Peking plays (current holders of the Bowl - winner of the losers final - but we're proud of it).

The President of the Peking Cricket Club is His Excellency David Irvine Australian Ambassador to the People's Republic of China and before him for a period of four years, Ric Smith, the previous Australian Ambassador. (David's brother played Shield cricket for WA in the 1960s and toured with the Bill Lawry's fateful team to South Africa).

The Australian Embassy as you can see has been a driving force behind cricket in Beijing and behind its revival. The team that played in Shanghai this year was all Australian and supported by Australia LNG (the company bidding for the 20 billion dollar gas contract presently up for grabs in the PRC).

The other big name in cricket and in fact China is Bruce Wang, who was an ex national level hockey player in China who went to Australia a couple of years ago and ended up playing more cricket than hockey. Bruce has a real passion for the game and has done a lot to ensure it stays alive in the PRC. He sponsors a national side to play in the Shanghai sixes each year.

The thorn in our side of late has been the lack of a venue. There are no cricket grounds in Beijing so we have to use soccer pitches, but it is not like you can just go down to the local ground and play a match. The going rate for ground hire can be as much as RMB2000 or a little over AUD400 for six hours and there is no pitch.

The other difficulty is that it is essentially an expatriate game here and the expats are either with big companies or Embassies who keep them busy most of the time.

We had a bit of a win last weekend (Aug. 5) when we had the first match for two years, Australia vs India, we needn't go into the details suffice to say that cricket was the winner. We have a momentum now and we think we may have resolved the ground problem, still at a high price but better than nothing. We hope to secure some steel sheeting next week, that we can lay and then cover with the artificial pitch we have to create a surface with some bounce. It is essentially the system used in Shanghai. If this works we envisage a couple more matches this year before it gets too cold.

In the pipeline is the Tianjin Cup the until recently, annual match between Australia and England. The cup was donated several years ago by the City of Melbourne who have a sister city relationship with Tianjin. Rather fitting given it is the 20th anniversary of the relationship this year.

The big one though will be the ALNG Challenge Cup, the first ever match Australia versus China. We hope to get Bruce and his boys out for a match which will become an annual event. Our plan is for it to be the centrepiece of the return of cricket in Beijing and with the help of Chris Smith from Easy FM, a fellow Aussie who is pushing hard for cricket here, we will get a lot of the local media involved. We have already had interest from Beijing Television, Beijing Youth Daily and some of the expat magazines.

The third string in the bow is a Great Wall Cup, between Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing in Beijing. We may run out of good weather and have to carry this over as a warm up to Shanghai next year maybe.

The final event we wish to revive is the traditional Australian embassy vs British Embassy Boxing Day match on the ice at the Summer Palace.

We have a job ahead of us and there is a lot to do but there is alot of enthusiasm. If you are looking for a game the door is always open.

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