CA Chairman backs annual Hughes tribute

On the eve of the Phillip Hughes Memorial Tribute Match in Kathmandu, Cricket Australia Chairman Wally Edwards has thrown his support behind plans to stage the game annually in Nepal and pledged that Australia will bring an even stronger on-field presence to future fixtures.

The 63-over (31.3 overs per side) match, to be played at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University Stadium tomorrow and will feature New South Wales batsman Ryan Carters who will captain one of the teams.

In the wake of the match, items including one of Hughes’s cricket bats and his Test and ODI playing shirts will be carried to the top of Mount Everest by a mountaineering expedition, where the former Australia player’s bat will be raised symbolically to the sky from the roof of the world.

The idea for the tribute game was initially floated by a playing member of the Nepal national team upon learning of Hughes’s death last November, and the Cricket Association of Nepal is hopeful the match will be staged around this time each year.

Its genesis also came from the worldwide embrace of the simple yet poignantly heartfelt tribute whereby people ‘put out their bats’ in memory of Phillip Hughes, which inspired Nepal’s cricket community to honour the loss of one of their hugely talented and highly respected brethren.

In doing so, the match is expected to forge stronger bilateral cricket ties between Australia and Nepal where the game garners significant support even though their national team’s sole major global tournament appearance was in last year’s ICC World T20 in Bangladesh.Image Id: ~/media/3AEC839BB72C4CAE9034A76FDCD45719

CA Chairman Wally Edwards speaks to the Nepal Prime Minister in Kathmandu // cricket.com.au

The Nepalese team, which will provide a bulk of the players for tomorrow’s match, scored victories over Hong Kong and Afghanistan in that tournament.

In his meeting with Nepal’s Prime Minister Sushil Koirala today, Edwards spoke of Cricket Australia’s commitment to the annual staging of the Phillip Hughes Tribute Match and pledged that a full XI of Australian-based players will take part from next year.

The heavy global schedule will not allow for many if any of Australia’s international players to be involved, but the fact the match will be scheduled following the end of the Australia summer and in close proximity to the Indian Premier League should ensure wider availability.

“It will be a representative team of some sort,” Edwards told cricket.com.au in Kathmandu today of plans to bolster the Australian presence at future Phillip Hughes Tribute Matches.

“It could be a Chairman’s team, it could be an under-23 team but the match will be played at the completion of the Australian international and first-class season, so in a way we will be looking for players who want to make themselves available.”

Edwards, who is in Nepal en route to this month’s ICC Board meeting in Dubai, believes strongly that cricket has a chance to establish a secure foothold in the Mountain Kingdom that stretches along the Himalayas between India’s north-eastern border with Tibet.

The recently-appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Cricket Association of Nepal, Bhawana Ghimire, is expecting a crowd in excess of 5,000 and is hoping to reach closer to 15,000 for tomorrow’s match that also features the national team captain (and local cricket hero) Paras Khadka.

Ms Ghimire took over the role six months ago after a period of administrative uncertainty and earlier this week secured for the Association a three-year sponsorship deal with Nepal Telecom worth more than $150,000 per annum, the most lucrative in the history of Nepalese sport.

Edwards said the galvanising of Nepal’s cricket administrative framework will strengthen further through support provided by the ICC and its full member nations such as Australia, a message he passed on to Prime Minister Koirala in Kathmandu today.

He said that in addition to helping grow and develop the game on the ground in Nepal, where cricket can be played up to nine months of each year, Cricket Australia was keen to share its facilities and experience to help further build capacity among Nepalese cricketers and administrators.

“We want to be able to perhaps bring some cricketers to Australia so they can train with our academies or with teams, as well as administrators,” Edwards told Nepalese media representatives following his half-hour meeting with the Prime Minister.

“Helping to improve the administration is the first building block to making better cricketers and the ICC will help with that as well.”