da pinnacle： The Malaysian Cricket Association has pulled out the stops for the U-19 World Cup, but there’s little interest on the streets of Kuala Lumpur
da prosport bet： George Binoy in Kuala Lumpur 17-Feb-2008
Spreading the word: the Malaysian Cricket Association has been targeting school children in an attempt to raise interest in cricket George Binoy
It’s a little odd that Malaysia is hosting an international sports tournament involving 16 teams across seven venues in three cities and the average Amir in Kuala Lumpur hasn’t a clue about it. The few who do know are surprised that Malaysia have an Under-19 team in the competition.The issues with cricket in Malaysia are quite the opposite from the problems that India and Pakistan faced back in the day. In their cases, there was a lack of infrastructure but no dearth of interest. In Malaysia there are adequate facilities but the interest and awareness levels for cricket are low. Most of the sporting attention is focused on football from all over the world, hockey and badminton. In the lead-up to the Under-19 World Cup, one daily had just one article on cricket in its numerous sports pages, and that was about Stephen Fleming’s retirement.It was with the aim of spreading interest among the local community that P Krishnaswamy, the deputy president of the Malaysian Cricket Associationand chairman of the organisation committee, went to the ICC to bid for theU-19 World Cup. What swung the deal for Malaysia, according to him, wasthat the ICC felt the country had the necessary facilities to host such a tournament.Those facilities were put in place when Malaysia hosted the CommonwealthGames in 1998. Cricket was part of the Games that year and several grounds had to be built in Kuala Lumpur. “We opened up a lot of turf wickets,” Krishnaswamy told Cricinfo. “The Commonwealth Games kickstarted the establishing of facilities.”However, the biggest challenge ahead of the U-19 World Cup was redoing thevenues to meet the standards required for an ICC event. “We had to have atleast nine turf-wicket grounds up to the necessary standard. There arefour practice grounds, three main grounds in Kuala Lumpur, and two inPenang and Johor. That was the biggest challenge – we had to get thegrounds up to world standard.”A lot the work involved improving the wickets and ensuring the outfieldand the irrigation was in good condition. The ICC has requirements for thechange rooms, and they needed anti-doping centres, so we had to get all thatdone. We are not a Test-playing nation, so we needed to build all thesethings.”Upgrading seven venues plus the practice grounds cost pots of money andthe MCA, which had to bear the cost of the refurbishment, was aided by theMalaysian government and some sponsors. Those sponsors, however, aren’teasily visible due to the protection the ICC gives its rights holders.Indeed, there isn’t much by way of conspicuous advertising for the tournament. There weren’t many signs at the airport and there are almost no billboards around the city.Efforts at publicity, it seems, have been made directly in schools for it is thatage group of Malaysians that the MCA is trying to bring into the sport.The MCA will have between 300 and 500 school children coming in to watch the matches every day and will try to instil interest by organising games and crickettrivia.Unlike other ICC tournaments – the senior World Cup and Champions Trophy, for instance – where tickets are exorbitantly priced, it costs nothing to watch theunder-19s in action. Still, though tickets are free for the entire tournament,Krishnaswamy didn’t expect hordes at the stadiums at the start of thetournament. He was optimistic of interest levels picking up once thequarter-finals got underway. Ten matches will be telecast live ontelevision, although they will be available only on a pay-per-view channel.At the end of the day, no matter how much effort is put into publicisingthe tournament, there’s no substitute for a few wins by the home side togenerate public interest.