HKCA announces National Women's Squad

Following on from its disappointing performances at the Asian Games, the Hong Kong Cricket Association has announced a new National Women's Squad that will form the core of the Hong Kong Women's Cricket team in the future.

The Women's National Training Squad has a total of twenty (20) players including nine of which will form the Elite Squad. The Elite Squad will train once a week and then join the full squad for at least two sessions a week. Training commences next week with fitness tests and player reviews from the Asian Games.

In announcing the new squads, Charlie Burke, HKCA National Coach, said "The reason [for the Elite Squad] is to increase the challenge and mindset of our Elite players that have played for a number of years at international level while ensuring our younger more inexperienced players continue to develop skills for the future."

"I do not see this as widening the gap between the skill level of our players but simply targeting specific skill areas for certain players' development and to achieve fast track improvement," he added.

Mrs Alice Jones, Women's Cricket Representative in the HKCA Committee said "The future for Women's Cricket is bright. We have a National Squad of 20 keen, enthusiastic and determined athletes that want to improve on our Asian Games experience. 2011 will see the introduction of a National 'A' Squad which will predominately be HKSAR passport holders and this will be a focus for the 2014 Asian Games in South Korea, along with the 'A' Squad we will continue to have our National Women's Squad which will compete in the ACC/ICC events."

The National Women's team will also defend their title in Kuwait in February 2011 when they take on the best in Asian for the ACC Women's T20 Championships.

May/June will see the Women's Elite Player Series which will be a combination of T20 and 50 over cricket to strengthen the competition for the country's best 26 players.

The National Women's Squad is as follows (players marked with * will form the Elite Squad):

• Neisha Pratt*
• Connie Wong*
• Mariko Hill*
• Ishitaa Gidwani*
• Manpreet Kaur*
• Betty Chan*
• Keenu Gill*
• Chan Sau Ha*
• Yasmin Daswani*
• Jaswinder Kaur
• Natural Yip
• Emma Liu
• Amanda Kwok
• Kiki Kan
• Janet Cheung
• Alvina Tam
• Annie Ho
• Smita Chetri
• Kristine Wong
• Iris Tse

Godiva Li was not included in the squad due to injury.