'It's soul-destroying that Hong Kong doesn't get due recognition'

You are from New South Wales, Australia, and you became the chief executive of Hong Kong Cricket Association [HKCA] in May 2015. Could you briefly take us through that journey?
It's a lifelong passion for cricket that got me here eventually, but my career started in marine insurance, straight after high school. A lot of people in the insurance industry have stories of falling into it and finding it hard to get out of. There are a lot of jealous people in the industry who have seen me get out. The [insurance career] took me to Brisbane and a lot of trips to London and eventually to Hong Kong. The CEO role for HKCA came up in late 2014. It was quite a long process and it eventually came on in May 2015.

Are you still actively playing cricket?
Yes, I still play for Hong Kong Cricket Club. When I arrived here, I threw myself back into cricket as I'd be in Sydney as well. I'd played grade cricket since I was 17. I played for Eastern Suburbs at the Waverley Oval. I made my first-grade debut when I was 19, playing against Mark Waugh in his last grade game for Bankstown. It's always great to play against someone whose poster sits on your bedroom wall.

I was lucky to be in the club along with the guys at the time - Greg Matthews, Anthony Stewart, Mark Patterson and Adrian Tucker. And to also be there to watch David Warner come through the ranks, and also with Brad Haddin and guys like Peter Nevill, who's in the club now - a very strong club and a great place to be.

Hong Kong is one of 38 Associate nations, as classified by the ICC. Is that sort of classification even necessary?
I've always looked at it from an Australian point of view but now looking at it from an Associate member point of view, I can see where the classification came from the ICC. The International Cricket Conference, as it was back then, had to assign their resources to various cricket federations around the world. As time has gone by, I am not sure that model fits what cricket is trying to be now - being the world's favorite sport. We have to make sure the ICC and the structures around that are set up for that, to encourage the sport is taken up by as many people as possible. Having the classes of membership is probably not the best way to do that.

It's not something that can be changed overnight, but I'd like to think there are people who are forging plans to create pathways from the newest or smallest of cricket nations all the way to the top to make it easier. We've got to be a lot more meritocratic. We really have to target the places where growth can happen and focus on that but provide logical pathways for countries and players with talent to come through. You can look at the Full Members and their funding and see why there are members, but how are we going to be the world's favourite sport? You've got hurdles for countries behind Zimbabwe. Countries like Ireland and Afghanistan make 10-20% of what Zimbabwe get, and yet you see how well a team like Afghanistan has been doing.

Even among Full Member nations there is no equal sharing of the ICC revenue. How do you go about growing a sport when there is such an obvious disparity in resources?
It is a very tough one. The strength of cricket, both financially and the way it's been able to project itself especially in the last decade or so, is definitely in relation to the sport in India, and the sporting market has matured so quickly there along with the actual economy of India itself. While acknowledging that, we have got to find a model that fairly rewards and incentivises the entire world. There are countries that are more equal than the others, but hopefully we are seeing a growth curve of cricket over time to get somewhere that is a lot more even.

You have got your No. 1-ranked Test team, South Africa, down at four in the funding model, and so far behind the Big Three. Something is not right there.

Unfortunately, cricket as a sport is a product these days. It's a vehicle for companies to get their name out there through sponsorship and other corporate- and social-responsibility initiatives. We have got to find that delicate balance between the product of cricket and the sport of cricket. I think we can do better. We need to embrace potential growth markets - I know places like USA have already been worked on - but more so with virgin turfs, with the likes of China, which is really growing with the development of sport as a part of the community. Hong Kong is very closely aligned to that, and is really ingraining sport as an intrinsic part of a child's development.

In your nine months as CEO of HKCA so far, have you seen things that put cricket first, ahead of individual nations' commercial interests?
There have been some positive changes with respect to T20 in the Olympics, and that's not just rhetoric. David Richardson gets unfairly spoken of in the press as the CEO of ICC. As an ex-Test cricketer, people expect him to act more like a passionate cricket fan rather than a professional CEO, but he works very hard behind the scenes for all cricket, and within the ICC. The development teams are great as well. I know how hard the ICC pushes for cricket's development and for T20 in the Olympics. I hope the recent changes within the ICC board will actually get us moving in the right direction. There has always been a close relationship between the International Olympic Committee and the ICC. From the developmental side, I know that's happening in the background. Things are moving in the right direction there.

But things like the ten-team World Cup, I can't imagine a more regressive step, if we look at the success of the 14-team World Cup. I really do think there are scars from the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies, what happened with the crowds and how the event seemed to drag on. An event with groups where big teams could get knocked out - that's the point of a World Cup. You look at the football World Cup when Australia was able to knock out the likes of Japan and Serbia - that's the point of it. FIFA's got its issues but if you look at how they have developed the sport around the world, there is no denying how well they have done.

In your capacity as CEO, what are your challenges?
Short term, at No. 1, screaming in red writing in huge bold font is, facilities. At the moment we only have three grounds that have turf wickets. After the handover, Hong Kong cricket unfortunately lost about four grounds that were on military grounds at that stage, but over time there have also been other grounds, generally in schools, unfortunately, that have been eaten up by AstroTurf football pitches, or the school doesn't have cricket there anymore. So being able to secure cricket facilities for kids and for adults who want to play is unfortunately the biggest constriction at the moment to the development of the sport here.

Number two would be engaging the local community. Cricket has been here for 100 years, ever since the British have been here. I have seen some great paintings, or photographs of Chinese Hong Kong kids playing cricket in the streets in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but unfortunately that passion hasn't grown like it has in India or in other subcontinental countries, where it is a genuine passion.

People say, "Why would you want to play cricket or push cricket in Hong Kong, there is nowhere to play it?" But I think it's the other way round - when you want to play cricket, you will find places to play. You see some great articles and pictures of Pakistan, for example, of tape-ball cricket in back alleys and more or less slums, where people are finding ways and chances to play cricket. We really need to make sure the sport fits Hong Kong's next generation. There is a very full sports market because we play in the one season because of the tropical climate. We enjoy it, but it means we can't play sports during the summer months, so every sport is played between the months of September and April-May, and the longer the season gets, the hotter it gets at each bookend of the season. We're competing with soccer, rugby.

Rugby is huge here on the back of the Sevens, so there are millions of Hong Kong dollars to invest in facilities and development programmes. We have 20 employees here, including groundsmen and coaches, and rugby has I think about 120. There is a lot of hard work behind the scenes of rugby and the Sevens and the Fifteens, but that's what we are up against. So being able to engage the local community with a sport like cricket, which on the face of it is quite complicated - you can't just turn up at a ground and understand what is going on - I think the challenge for the sport here is to get junior programmes that make sense, similar to what Brazil has done. Their work has been just to make it fun. It's for us to engage with the parents as well, the ones who are making the decisions about which sports the kids play.

Do you have a target of the number of adult players you would want to have by the end of 2016-17?
The adult numbers at the moment are maxing out at 1000 full-time cricketers that are playing in a league - the Challenge League - which is very much a recreational, community-cricket Sunday league; and our top-tier premiere league. I think we've really got to be setting targets around how many kids, and local Hong Kong Chinese kids, are going to be playing, and it really does depend again on facilities. We're hopefully about to announce a new facility, which will have three cricket grounds, which will be a boon for what we can do for cricket, development-wise. I'd like to think that of the 4000 kids we have in programmes at the moment, we'll be able to double that in the next two to three years by not only using the new grounds but also by having more targeted development programmes rather than taking a shotgun approach and just sending development officers out to as many schools as they can and running courses.

Rather than looking at a short-term, one-year goal as an example, I think we really need to look more mid-term and get some success out of the programmes we're developing now, which will be around the Hong Kong Sixes brand, and be able to scale them when they succeed. It's evident in Hong Kong that there are so many sports and so many offerings to schools, that we've got to be a lot more targeted in where we go, and really find partners rather than just do courses blindly and hope people are going to turn up.

You have Ming Li, a Chinese player, a legspinner picked up as a rookie player for Sydney Sixers, and you have Mark Chapman, a player of both New Zealand and Chinese heritage, and now you have a ground that is accredited as an ODI ground. Are you planning something along the lines of hosting IPL games or BBL games?
Things are moving in the right direction, and Ming Li picked up by the Sixers is a great opportunity for both the Sixers and ourselves to show what cricket can do for someone who comes from the Hong Kong Chinese community, and how it has changed his life.

The ground is only approved as an ODI ground for Associate/Affiliate T20Is and ODIs, I'll make that clear, so in terms of it being able to host an IPL or BBL game, I don't think it is to that standard. However, with the development of the old airport at Kai Tak, the government is considering options with a multipurpose sporting facility that they are putting in there. I have actually pitched it exactly as you said, as a potential neutral venue for Tests, one-day internationals, and next-tier world tournaments, be it Under-19 World Cup, women's World Cup, or qualifying tournaments, and also to the likes of the IPL and BBL as well.

From a mid-term point of view, I think the Kai Tak complex is a great example of how we can show what we are trying to add ourselves, and rather than sitting with our hands out, saying, "Where's our money?" we can actually create value for ourselves by bringing a product to East Asia that is unique. And we will potentially have the best facility there, and only two hours away from another class facility in Guangzhou, which unfortunately hasn't been utilised as much as it could have been after hosting the Asian Games back in 2010.

If Mark Chapman heads to New Zealand, what kind of blow is that to your Hong Kong cricket system? How do teams like Hong Kong and Ireland hold on to talent?
It makes it very hard for emerging cricket nations to hold on to their talented players who either have heritage elsewhere or are able to play cricket in that country and get to a point where they can qualify. The qualification is four years, and you only have to be there for six months plus one day of that preceding four-year period to qualify for a nation, unless, of course, you were born there or hold that country's passport, which means another variable there too.

Mark Chapman, a class player, has been unlucky to not get as many accolades as he deserves with the way that he played in the last year, since I've come on. At the World T20 qualifiers, despite him not getting a fifty he was one of the best batsmen, I think. The way he batted in situations showed a calmness beyond his years, and in games that were consequential, that actually meant something for Hong Kong cricket. That innings against Afghanistan - winning that game means a lot of funding; losing that game means a do-or-die playoff against Papua New Guinea, a very strong country as well.

We talk about cricket of consequence. There is nothing more than that game to show when cricket actually means something. And the way he played in the UAE after getting off the plane - he had his university exam, almost missed his flight to Dubai, got off the plane, goes out there and bats and scores the second-fastest one-day international hundred on debut, done by the youngest person, and one of only 10 men to have done that. That's amazing! [It came against] the UAE, I know they were a little under-strength than what they were in the World Cup, but they were in the World Cup! That's no mean feat, and you want to talk about class or membership levels, that's a one-day international and not even mentioned at the ESPNcricinfo Awards as an ODI performance of 2015. I think that just shows how far we have to come before the emerging cricket nations beyond that top 10 until we actually get a fair suck at the suds, so to speak.

How thankless a job is it, when you put your heart and soul in it and there isn't the least bit of recognition globally?
Well, for a cricket tragic and someone who now works as CEO of an emerging nation, it's soul-destroying, I would say. You get emotional about these things, and I'm not going to pretend that I don't, and I think to some degree Hong Kong doesn't get the recognition it deserves. It has a perspective to many of being "just another team of expats". If people actually look beyond what names they see on the list, say in our best XI, eight of those have learned the sport in Hong Kong, and half of those were actually born here. There's only three guys that you'd deem as "qualifiers" on our team, and they've been here over seven years and either have a Hong Kong passport or are in the process of applying for permanent residency.

I don't think we get the same exposure as another country that has the same "indigenous" element, or at least a majority of those. The guys you see on the Hong Kong side, they come through the Hong Kong system, they've been coached here from when they first picked up a bat. Yes, they come from families where cricket has a deeper heritage and following, but if you can't start building with the second and third generations of people who have come from cricket-playing nations, then where else can you go? We're lucky that we have a large community of expats from cricket-playing nations, although now they're Hong Kongers.

Jamie Atkinson, Mark Chapman, Anshuman Rath - all born in Hong Kong. This is Hong Kong's future, and again this is where the emotion comes in! In the [World T20] promotional videos and ads that are out, very seldom do you see the Hong Kong guys there, despite how high we are in the world rankings. I think there's almost an expectation that we've crested in our wave and we'll just go down. It's very much a focus of all of us, and especially me, that we don't regress from where we are at the moment, that we only go higher and higher.

We have a smaller pool of players and we have our challenges, but we also have some of the best coaching staff in the world. So yes, it makes it very hard. There are changes that need to be made in qualifications for players to allow development of those emerging nations. Those emerging nations need to have the opportunity of playing Test cricket or a variant, depending what it gets called all the way through. We need to have the best cricketers playing the best cricket possible.

When Hong Kong played England in the UAE, and there was possibly an ODI status to that game and then later on there wasn't, it was 13-a-side, and you spoke of the cost of organising it, which was $100,000 - nothing when it comes to the ECB. Hong Kong has had ODI status for nearly two years, and you've played one fixture against a Full Member nation so far…
It was a frustrating situation and it brings into question of what is the point of having ODI status? I think it was Malcolm Cannon recently, CEO of Cricket Scotland, who said, "What is the point of having status if we don't actually get to use it?" I know how hard Hong Kong worked to get that status, especially that 2014 tournament, when we both got ODI status, and what does it actually mean to us? All it meant was that even when we get an opportunity to play a Full Member, it's harder than it should be to be able to play the proper status of the game. Look at when Australia plays England in a football friendly - it's still an international, it still counts. The whole notion of friendly and warm-up games, it's a tough one.

I don't want to make ECB the bad guys here because $100,000 for any nation, unbudgeted, is big. I'm not sure we should be pointing at the ECB, saying it was their responsibility to be footing the bill for this. I think it goes broader and wider actually, with it being on the sport's shoulders to create something to help in situations like that, and the fact that an ODI fund had been discussed, I think in the last two or three years, and nothing has come of that.

I think it's much more down to the ICC and then within that the Full Members to agree, similar to what the ACC [Asian Cricket Council] is doing, even though the ACC as we know it doesn't exist, but even from an event point of view, with having the Full Members reinvest 2% of their earnings back into the pot that goes towards development of the Associate members within the ACC membership, so I think this is an all-in, all-for-one one-for-all point of view here.

With the ECB, the chance that we got to play them was great and the fact that they picked the best team they could, and that Hong Kong was able to compete for 80-90% of the game, which again shows how much and how far we've come along. Similar with the T20 with Pakistan. And again nobody is talking about Pakistan not doing the same thing as vociferously as they are about the ECB, and again we played Pakistan in the 2008 Asia Cup in ODIs and we were beaten soundly, but again we competed, and it was that last 10-15% of the game that made the difference. The fact that Pakistan were hosting the series and the Emirates Cricket Board were acting as the hosts, and then the ECB touring, so many cooks there, and then you've got the ICC in Dubai as well, and Richard Done, the high performance manager for the ICC in trying to get those fixtures sorted for the Associates...

When it comes to such situations when you are representing an emerging cricketing nation, what kind of bargaining chips do you have?
I think they've stopped using the term "minnows" now, which is good, but like in business, that's the position we're in at the moment. It's a very commercial model there, with the amount of money that goes into organising a Full Member tour. From our point of view, if we had longer to organise it, I would've been confident in terms of sponsorship, that we would have been able to find someone that would have been interested, but also that would have meant that it would've needed to be televised, which had never been discussed either. Which makes it hard too. How do you get value for sponsors beyond the feel-good value, unless they are going to get the exposure they deserve supporting something like that?

Bargaining chip is tough, and that's why opportunities like relaxing the sponsorship restrictions on our clothing in the World T20 qualifier - instead of having only one sponsor [logo] on the arm, we should have been allowed normal ODI-T20 status and have a full sponsor on the front of the shirt. Just little things that we can begin to tick off like that. Even in the ACC and the Asia Cups we've got a qualification between the four T20 Asian nations - UAE, Oman, us and Afghanistan, and after that round-robin, the top team will go through and play against the main member nations. Why do we not have an eight-team tournament of T20 cricket, perfect preparation for the World T20?

Give us an opportunity to play a main tournament there among the Asian nations that is being televised, that is worth a lot of money. That gives us not only the opportunity to be part of that spectacle for our players' development but also the commercial development for us to be able to find sponsors that will then support us from the World T20, the Asia Cup…

Hong Kong v India - can you imagine the commercial value of what that is if it's televised in India? And then into the World T20 as well. In the World T20, why we can't turn that into a 16-team [tournament], whether it's four groups of four, two groups of eight, it wouldn't take long. You get a round-robin within two groups of eight, and have an opportunity for the Associates or qualifying countries to play against the main nations.

From a commercial point of view I think we could be given a lot more opportunities without too much change. Then when we've got the money in our coffers, we can cover the cost from our business, because it is a business - it's a fairly logical solution to me.

Do you set goals for the team's performances as the CEO or do you leave it to the coaches? What are your hopes for Hong Kong both on and off the field in 2016?
The person who is responsible for goals is Charlie Burke, who is director of cricket. And we've just imported Simon Cook as full-time head coach as well, so we have a great team there.

I'd say from the basic point of view we want to be able to maintain ODI status at the end of this World Cricket League [WCL] cycle. To me that means we'll need to finish in the top half. Whether that then guarantees ODI status I'm not sure, but whatever half we're given, at the moment it's simple - we've got to win all our games, and we're going to make sure we've got the best teams possible.

The Intercontinental Cup, I think, is probably where we're going to be weakest, but if we can finish in the top half of the table, that would be great for our development. And while I don't think it's a realistic goal for us to be able to finish in the top one or two there, the skills the boys are going to learn there on the field are going to help us in our 50-over cricket - in terms of building an innings and how you can structure that.

Now that the World T20s have changed to every four years I think we're one of the stronger Associate members with the T20 game when we get it right. We expect to either beat anybody or lose to anybody - that was evident in the qualifiers, losing to Jersey and the USA but beating Ireland and Afghanistan. We need to get our consistency up and make sure we're at the leading edge.

To get through in to the main group [of the World T20] is a stretch - target, shall we call it. It's a great group: Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Hong Kong, and Scotland. I don't think you could create a more even group at the moment in T20 cricket. You couldn't even say there's a favourite there. You could maybe say Afghanistan because of their recent performances, but we've beaten them the last two times we've played them. You could say Scotland; again, they beat us in the semi-final, but this is in completely different conditions. So I think in terms of quality cricket, that's going to be great. But again, it's got to be our goal to qualify for the next World T20.

That's from a men's T20 point of view but we've also got a great Under-19 team coming through and we'll have a couple qualifying tournaments there on the path to the next U-19 World Cup. Also, our ladies are getting better by the day as well, so there's a tournament coming up later in the year that we have the potential to host, out of the four or five nations that will be in it. So we're getting a lot more regular international cricket.

We're very lucky in that we're able to play our tours and are a little bit further ahead than we used to be.

We'll ne hosting our first ever ODI, first-class and T20 cricket in Hong Kong later this month. We should be streaming the one-day internationals and the T20 internationals against Scotland - on January 26 and 28 for the ODIs and the T20s will be on the 30th and 31st. So if you live in Hong Kong, get on and buy those tickets and get out there and see it, but otherwise I hope to see lots of you guys logging on and watching us online.