The Mongolian Cricket Club was formed in 1995

The Mongolian Cricket Club was formed in 1995 and was given formal approval by MCC to use the Initials "MCC" to describe itself in any activities or correspondence where there is no conflict of proprietorial "grandfather" rights or interests.

The founder members were a Scottish expatriate working in Mongolia on World Bank funded projects, two other British expatriates (one Irish, one English)employed by contractors fulfilling Asian Development Bank projects, an Indian resident representative of an Indian contractor (Messrs Angelique International, who donated equipment handsomely) and members of the diplomatic staff of the Indian Embassy.

The Australian Embassy, Beijing, donated a "get you started " bag of used but serviceableequipment ; Messrs MOBIL (Korea) donated a trophy and two teams worth of caps and "MCC" was set to purchase its whites, supplementary equipment and negotiate the TV rights for broadcasting on Mongolian Television! (In this country the "broadcasted" pay the "broadcaster"!)

The match for the Mobil Trophy duly took place in the form of a President's XI vs The Rest, played on the National Stadium where the annual wrestling championships,one of Mongolia's "manly sports" take place. (128 - 64 pairs - wrestle at the same time to start with, and over 7 rounds come down to the final two contenders. It was a major concession by the Mongolian Sports Authority to allow the "sanctum sanctorum" to be used!)

Somehow this became India vs The Rest and the Trophy duly went to the Indian Embassy where it has remained ever since, despite annual attempts, during the three months of June, July , August and September when cricket can be played, to prise it loose. No, not a typo - only 3 months from the four and subject even more than normal to the vagaries of the rainy season. This year we have been asked to play early as Mongolia needs rain, and the correlation between cricket and rain has been noted as statistically significant by Mongolian Met Men!

As the first International Test Match was played between Canada and USA in the 1800's, it was thought proper to include Canadian and American representatives in the President's team. Mongolians, who had been educated as schoolboys on UK Headmasters' Conference Scholarships, and others who had grown up in India took part and continue to p;lay when in Mongolia.

Eton contributed one such young man . Seems as though since Scottish schools are now providing the UK Cabinet , other schools are fulfilling a still useful role!

Currently there are three "members" - ie people who will be in Mongolia for more than 4-6 weeks! - and we are confident of getting two sides together again this year to compete for the Mobil Trophy for the fifth time Our players are necessarily transients, apart from one or two stalwarts from the Diplomats, and the original Scot founder member.

We hope to lay a concrete wicket some time soon when we can sweet talk a contractor into doing it - although not of course in the national stadium. We will hope to get the Mongolian Carpet Company to provide a playing surface in exchange for advertising the initials (!)

The thing we most need is a Score Book - playing kit was deemed most important!

As for the future.....? We can rely on the Indian Embassy to keep the game going, and the British Embassy to give support and, hopefully, a player or two either from staff or from the Friday happy hour crew invited by the Embassy Staff to "The Steppe Inne"

This year, if we get some reasonable playing strength - remember, all our expatriates are here for intensive work during the few months when the temperature is higher than 15C ( As the Mongolians put it , "......like the birds , in with the sunshine out with the snow ") and therefore cannot travel, we hope to persuade the Wizards of OZ in Beijing to have a long weekend in Mongolia and play some Cricket. They might, if they are lucky, also find out why it took Marco Polo 19 years to get back !

Perhaps it is also appropriate, as Mongolia is a centre of world Buddhism, to have the game which some Scotsman described as "the Englishman's Zen" played in the land of Ghenghis Khan.