Tendulkar's South Korean touch

Nasir Khan, a Pakistani-born coach living in South Korea, was searching for a way to motivate South Korea's Asian Games team. His idea: showing clips of Sachin Tendulkar to the local players. Nasir's efforts have led to several local girls slowly shifting disciplines from swimming, golf, tennis and badminton, to a "new sport" called cricket.

Eunjin Lee, a 21-year-old former lifeguard, is one such batsman who has copied Tendulkar's style. "She used to fret over the lack of strength in her arms, and her height. But I motivated her by showing her videos of the great man," Nasir told Daily News and Analysis. 'See, this guy is short in stature, but he's very tall in his achievements'," Nasir tells Lee and her other team-mates during training sessions.

Though South Korea has had a cricket league in place since the early 90s, it mostly consisted of players from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Australia. It wasn't until the 2010 Asian Games that South Korea even formed a men's team, and it took another three years to create one for the women. Nasir was then tasked with finding women who could be trained for these games, and he set out by putting up banners in colleges and universities for the same. He next had to take these women to a cricket-playing country for exposure, and surprisingly, Nasir chose Nepal.

Why? "The girls were not ready to go to Pakistan," he said. "Sri Lanka would be too rainy and Australia too cold. We were also worried that I could be denied an Indian visa because of my Pakistani background.

"It was during our stay in Nepal that the girls watched the IPL. As cricket in Asian Games is a T20 affair, the girls could understand the game better."