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spiderbraidsTime for another Howzat :-) (Warning: Lots of statistics stuff)
Ironically, I started writing this entry exactly two months ago, on June 6, the very day Thailand women's next cric tournament, the ACC Women’s Emerging Teams Asia Cup, was due to start; however, it's been postponed due to "adverse weather conditions in Sri Lanka and health concerns owing to the spread of chikungunya disease in the region" (I'd have imagined that the first part would have been reason enough given the washouts at the previous edition, as well as the fact that June is monsoon season there, but disease is definitely a good reason, especially given that a disease-induced tournament cancellation is a major part of Thailand's history with women's cric :-\)
So, as previously teased, and in light of Emerging Cricket talking about the lack of robust upcoming talent in Thailand in their recent podcast, I decided to start looking into the local cric scene over here, starting with venues :-) There have only been 3 venues in the whole country that have hosted official international cricket matches: the two that hosted the recent ICC Qualifier tournament, i.e. Terdthai and AIT Cricket Grounds in the Bangkok area, and the Royal Chiangmai Golf Club's cricket oval over in the northern town of Chiang Mai, which hosted a series with the Netherlands in 2022... Other grounds in the country include:
- Alan Cooke Ground in Phuket in the south
- Horseshoe Point in Pattaya (Chonburi province) in the east
- Dusit Thani Hotel Polo Ground in Hua Hin (Prachuab Khiri Khan province), used for International Sixes
- Royal Bangkok Sports Club in downtown Bangkok, and the Bangkok Cricket Association ground in the Bangkok area (I take that term loosely, because all of the "proper" Bangkok area grounds except RBSC are nowhere near downtown; BCA also has a smaller "box cricket" venue closer to downtown)
- Gymkhana Club and Prem David Buck Oval in Chiang Mai (as previously mentioned, Chiang Mai is a relative cric hot bed locally, with Gymkhana having hosted matches since 1899 and an International Sixes tournament since 1988)
That said, most of the matches played at these venues involve mostly expats, rather than locals picking up the gentleman's game, and I don't imagine many of them just casually heading down to the grounds for a game; for example, RBSC is an exclusive club, and the BCA grounds are mainly surrounded by coconut plantations (!), while Prem David Buck Oval is located at an international boarding school (so I assume it's made more to cater to the internationals than the locals)
Anyhow, cricket has been featured at the National Games in recent years (T20 format of course), and last year's competition featured many more provinces than the aforementioned places with cricket grounds (with the exclusion of Phuket and Prachuab, who did not even feature in the regional qualifying tournaments for the event) And on top of that, the Games were being held in the eastern province of Chanthaburi, which to put it bluntly, doesn't have any real cricket grounds... They do have this venue though :-)
That's Soidao Withaya School, in a provincial district quite a ways away from Chanthaburi's main town, and the venue used for cricket is literally their soccer field... It should be noted that Soidao has hosted tournaments regularly, such as an annual women's U19 league tournament and an annual provincial U18 tournament :-)
This is hardly the only instance of a national cricket tournament having to make do with soccer fields; for example, this year, a national U15 T20 tournament was hosted in Srisaket province in the northeast, at two schools and a district office, and utilizing the soccer fields in all cases... Given that the soccer fields have the typical 100x70m dimensions, it implies that the shortest possible boundary is around 35m perpendicular to the pitch (and roughly 40m parallel behind the wicket), which is apparently about the minimum boundary size for U13s, to say nothing of senior-level matches (which specify at least 60 meters for men, and about 55 for women), as far as this page is concerned...
(Incidentally, a measurement on Google Maps for Soidao suggests that the field is roughly 80m wide, which implies 40m boundaries, making it adequate, though still towards the low end, for most junior cricket)
So it's probably not surprising there were a couple matches with 200+ scores on the boys' side, though in both cases, the teams' scores were inflated by a century of extras (just as well local tournaments never add additional balls for each extra until the last over, instead electing to just award 2 runs for each extra; seems games would never get finished otherwise; and it's also telling that even at the national level, teams have issues with proper bowling)
In the case of the senior-level National Games men's tournament , there were 7 matches that ended with 200+ scores for the winning team, including the final, which featured an aggregate total of 401 runs between the two teams (of which only 22 came from extras), and one player on the winning side going for 143 (including 14 sixes), which has only been bettered internationally 6 times (with 8 occasions where a batter has made at least 14 sixes)
There's even a YouTube livestream of this match (as well as the other matches of the tournament), but it's only a step up from the livestream of the notorious fake Indian league that made the news in 2022; the in-depth Sports Illustrated article described that "They focused the camera tightly around the 22-yard strip between bowler and batter, ensuring that, once hit, a ball’s destiny was revealed to viewers only via the hand signals of Davda’s handpicked umpires and the play-by-play calls"... Turns out, that's not all that much different from what the actual National Games tournament livestream (and many other streams) does (though to their credit, this and other more recent tournaments offer a side angle of the pitch :-)) Of course I'm not accusing these matches of being anything but above-board; Thailand are clearly doing something right if they're among the top non-full members on the women's side (unlike France)
(Aside: On the women's side, there were 5 200+ scores, but 3 of the 5 benefited from at least 90 runs from extras, and the others got "only" 45 and 55)
If you think having a 70m wide field was "bad" enough, this year's National Youth Games held boys' matches at a field that was only 60 meters wide, while girls played at a 70m wide field, which seems backwards even before considering that either field was arguably on the small side... Once again, it looks like the smaller-than-ideal dimensions led to inflated scores: The boys had 6 matches with 200+ totals (with teams getting between 25 and 67 runs from extras), plus two matches with both teams scoring in the 180s (!), and three different players managing ten 6's in a single innings (two of them in the 200+ matches) Meanwhile, the highest score amongst the girls was 179, with 118 runs from extras... But this particular result takes the cake, extras-wise: One team managed 120 runs, with only 17 of them coming from the bat; while the winning team got 119 of its 168 off extras, leaving just 49 from the bat :-\ Whereas the most extras the senior women have bowled in a single match is just 18, from this year's quadrangular in Thailand against Hong Kong, the national youth-level girls' final had the teams combine for 65 extras over 34 overs while the U15 girls final had 100 over 38+ overs; compared to just 33 over 33+ overs at the senior women's finals :-\
And most recently, the Cricket Association of Thailand held a U12 tournament (and later an umpire course) on a synth turf soccer field on the eastern resort island of Ko Chang, whose dimensions are 90x50m... The pitch was oriented based on the center circle and line instead of perpendicularly as observed in other setups, meaning a 35m boundary in front of the strike end and 15m behind, with 45m perpendicular boundaries at most, whereas U12's should have something like 30m (and of course, there was still plenty of extras to be had, for example this game had 77 runs out of 139 scored via extras)
All this to say that Thailand doesn't have adequate venues for "proper" cricket competition, and though, as mentioned in my first Howzat, I don't claim to know the ins-and-outs of how Thailand cricket is run, this likely affects their ability to attract players from outside the main hot beds at the youth level (Even amongst the provinces in the youth competitions, it seems that the provincial teams tend to only come from just a small set of schools; the Chanthaburi tournament had at least five returning schools out of 8 between the 2023 and 2025 editions)
And between how much space a proper cricket ground takes up (Terdthai is 150x150m) and cricket's "johnny-come-lately" status as a sport over here, there's next to no case for constructing a new dedicated cric facility, even allowing that one can be also used for soccer a la AIT, and pretty much nowhere reasonably-priced to build one that's close to significantly populated areas, and even then, it's probably more likely that owners would prefer to use the land to grow crops, so one can see how hard it is for Thailand to create a robust talent pipeline to foster the next generation of women's cricketers (and men's too!) but we're certainly trying... as the Association gets ready to hold a national U18 tournament between various provinces, being held, as usual, at school soccer fields in a provincial town (with 4 of the provinces in each gender apparently being represented by an individual school, and Chanthaburi sending two schools as separate teams in the girls' competition [!])
(Aside, from outside of cric: In the Howzat about the 2025 WODI qualifiers, I posted about how the FIVB has been supporting Thailand women's volleyball, with a permanent spot in the Women's Nations League... Well, starting this year, the FIVB no longer divides teams between core (permanent) and challenger teams, and Thailand barely managed to avoid relegation by one spot over South Korea (a one-time rival of Thailand's in the sport))
For now, I leave you with another mention of Thailand getting screwed over in the context of "What if an underdog team did well (in an annulled qualifiers)?" (with honorable mentions for Bertus de Jong's comment in a different thread on the same match referenced, and notthathunter talking about Zimbabwe getting Women's Championship games over Thailand and Scotland), plus another instance of Thai women's cric coverage in the local media, with TNN World's piece on the team, published in May 2022 in conjunction with the AFP heartache piece mentioned in the first Howzat, acknowledging how unknown cricket is in Thailand, and featuring interviews with the players (many of whom say that people tend to mistake it for field hockey, yet another niche sport), as well as a mention of the cancellation of the qualifying tournament for the 2022 World Cup (even though the piece doesn't get into the long and short of the real reason it was such a big deal)...
...and a late-breaking piece of news: With the UAE, hosts for the previous two Women's T20 Global Qualifiers, not qualifying on this occasion, the ICC are holding the 2026 Women's T20 Global Qualifier, for which Thailand has qualified, in Nepal, with two groups of five, followed by a Super Six stage and a Final, which means they're using the same format that was supposed to happen at the 2021 WODI qualifiers, and tacking on a redundant final at the end :-)
Ironically, I started writing this entry exactly two months ago, on June 6, the very day Thailand women's next cric tournament, the ACC Women’s Emerging Teams Asia Cup, was due to start; however, it's been postponed due to "adverse weather conditions in Sri Lanka and health concerns owing to the spread of chikungunya disease in the region" (I'd have imagined that the first part would have been reason enough given the washouts at the previous edition, as well as the fact that June is monsoon season there, but disease is definitely a good reason, especially given that a disease-induced tournament cancellation is a major part of Thailand's history with women's cric :-\)
So, as previously teased, and in light of Emerging Cricket talking about the lack of robust upcoming talent in Thailand in their recent podcast, I decided to start looking into the local cric scene over here, starting with venues :-) There have only been 3 venues in the whole country that have hosted official international cricket matches: the two that hosted the recent ICC Qualifier tournament, i.e. Terdthai and AIT Cricket Grounds in the Bangkok area, and the Royal Chiangmai Golf Club's cricket oval over in the northern town of Chiang Mai, which hosted a series with the Netherlands in 2022... Other grounds in the country include:
- Alan Cooke Ground in Phuket in the south
- Horseshoe Point in Pattaya (Chonburi province) in the east
- Dusit Thani Hotel Polo Ground in Hua Hin (Prachuab Khiri Khan province), used for International Sixes
- Royal Bangkok Sports Club in downtown Bangkok, and the Bangkok Cricket Association ground in the Bangkok area (I take that term loosely, because all of the "proper" Bangkok area grounds except RBSC are nowhere near downtown; BCA also has a smaller "box cricket" venue closer to downtown)
- Gymkhana Club and Prem David Buck Oval in Chiang Mai (as previously mentioned, Chiang Mai is a relative cric hot bed locally, with Gymkhana having hosted matches since 1899 and an International Sixes tournament since 1988)
That said, most of the matches played at these venues involve mostly expats, rather than locals picking up the gentleman's game, and I don't imagine many of them just casually heading down to the grounds for a game; for example, RBSC is an exclusive club, and the BCA grounds are mainly surrounded by coconut plantations (!), while Prem David Buck Oval is located at an international boarding school (so I assume it's made more to cater to the internationals than the locals)
Anyhow, cricket has been featured at the National Games in recent years (T20 format of course), and last year's competition featured many more provinces than the aforementioned places with cricket grounds (with the exclusion of Phuket and Prachuab, who did not even feature in the regional qualifying tournaments for the event) And on top of that, the Games were being held in the eastern province of Chanthaburi, which to put it bluntly, doesn't have any real cricket grounds... They do have this venue though :-)
That's Soidao Withaya School, in a provincial district quite a ways away from Chanthaburi's main town, and the venue used for cricket is literally their soccer field... It should be noted that Soidao has hosted tournaments regularly, such as an annual women's U19 league tournament and an annual provincial U18 tournament :-)
This is hardly the only instance of a national cricket tournament having to make do with soccer fields; for example, this year, a national U15 T20 tournament was hosted in Srisaket province in the northeast, at two schools and a district office, and utilizing the soccer fields in all cases... Given that the soccer fields have the typical 100x70m dimensions, it implies that the shortest possible boundary is around 35m perpendicular to the pitch (and roughly 40m parallel behind the wicket), which is apparently about the minimum boundary size for U13s, to say nothing of senior-level matches (which specify at least 60 meters for men, and about 55 for women), as far as this page is concerned...
(Incidentally, a measurement on Google Maps for Soidao suggests that the field is roughly 80m wide, which implies 40m boundaries, making it adequate, though still towards the low end, for most junior cricket)
So it's probably not surprising there were a couple matches with 200+ scores on the boys' side, though in both cases, the teams' scores were inflated by a century of extras (just as well local tournaments never add additional balls for each extra until the last over, instead electing to just award 2 runs for each extra; seems games would never get finished otherwise; and it's also telling that even at the national level, teams have issues with proper bowling)
In the case of the senior-level National Games men's tournament , there were 7 matches that ended with 200+ scores for the winning team, including the final, which featured an aggregate total of 401 runs between the two teams (of which only 22 came from extras), and one player on the winning side going for 143 (including 14 sixes), which has only been bettered internationally 6 times (with 8 occasions where a batter has made at least 14 sixes)
There's even a YouTube livestream of this match (as well as the other matches of the tournament), but it's only a step up from the livestream of the notorious fake Indian league that made the news in 2022; the in-depth Sports Illustrated article described that "They focused the camera tightly around the 22-yard strip between bowler and batter, ensuring that, once hit, a ball’s destiny was revealed to viewers only via the hand signals of Davda’s handpicked umpires and the play-by-play calls"... Turns out, that's not all that much different from what the actual National Games tournament livestream (and many other streams) does (though to their credit, this and other more recent tournaments offer a side angle of the pitch :-)) Of course I'm not accusing these matches of being anything but above-board; Thailand are clearly doing something right if they're among the top non-full members on the women's side (unlike France)
(Aside: On the women's side, there were 5 200+ scores, but 3 of the 5 benefited from at least 90 runs from extras, and the others got "only" 45 and 55)
If you think having a 70m wide field was "bad" enough, this year's National Youth Games held boys' matches at a field that was only 60 meters wide, while girls played at a 70m wide field, which seems backwards even before considering that either field was arguably on the small side... Once again, it looks like the smaller-than-ideal dimensions led to inflated scores: The boys had 6 matches with 200+ totals (with teams getting between 25 and 67 runs from extras), plus two matches with both teams scoring in the 180s (!), and three different players managing ten 6's in a single innings (two of them in the 200+ matches) Meanwhile, the highest score amongst the girls was 179, with 118 runs from extras... But this particular result takes the cake, extras-wise: One team managed 120 runs, with only 17 of them coming from the bat; while the winning team got 119 of its 168 off extras, leaving just 49 from the bat :-\ Whereas the most extras the senior women have bowled in a single match is just 18, from this year's quadrangular in Thailand against Hong Kong, the national youth-level girls' final had the teams combine for 65 extras over 34 overs while the U15 girls final had 100 over 38+ overs; compared to just 33 over 33+ overs at the senior women's finals :-\
And most recently, the Cricket Association of Thailand held a U12 tournament (and later an umpire course) on a synth turf soccer field on the eastern resort island of Ko Chang, whose dimensions are 90x50m... The pitch was oriented based on the center circle and line instead of perpendicularly as observed in other setups, meaning a 35m boundary in front of the strike end and 15m behind, with 45m perpendicular boundaries at most, whereas U12's should have something like 30m (and of course, there was still plenty of extras to be had, for example this game had 77 runs out of 139 scored via extras)
All this to say that Thailand doesn't have adequate venues for "proper" cricket competition, and though, as mentioned in my first Howzat, I don't claim to know the ins-and-outs of how Thailand cricket is run, this likely affects their ability to attract players from outside the main hot beds at the youth level (Even amongst the provinces in the youth competitions, it seems that the provincial teams tend to only come from just a small set of schools; the Chanthaburi tournament had at least five returning schools out of 8 between the 2023 and 2025 editions)
And between how much space a proper cricket ground takes up (Terdthai is 150x150m) and cricket's "johnny-come-lately" status as a sport over here, there's next to no case for constructing a new dedicated cric facility, even allowing that one can be also used for soccer a la AIT, and pretty much nowhere reasonably-priced to build one that's close to significantly populated areas, and even then, it's probably more likely that owners would prefer to use the land to grow crops, so one can see how hard it is for Thailand to create a robust talent pipeline to foster the next generation of women's cricketers (and men's too!) but we're certainly trying... as the Association gets ready to hold a national U18 tournament between various provinces, being held, as usual, at school soccer fields in a provincial town (with 4 of the provinces in each gender apparently being represented by an individual school, and Chanthaburi sending two schools as separate teams in the girls' competition [!])
(Aside, from outside of cric: In the Howzat about the 2025 WODI qualifiers, I posted about how the FIVB has been supporting Thailand women's volleyball, with a permanent spot in the Women's Nations League... Well, starting this year, the FIVB no longer divides teams between core (permanent) and challenger teams, and Thailand barely managed to avoid relegation by one spot over South Korea (a one-time rival of Thailand's in the sport))
For now, I leave you with another mention of Thailand getting screwed over in the context of "What if an underdog team did well (in an annulled qualifiers)?" (with honorable mentions for Bertus de Jong's comment in a different thread on the same match referenced, and notthathunter talking about Zimbabwe getting Women's Championship games over Thailand and Scotland), plus another instance of Thai women's cric coverage in the local media, with TNN World's piece on the team, published in May 2022 in conjunction with the AFP heartache piece mentioned in the first Howzat, acknowledging how unknown cricket is in Thailand, and featuring interviews with the players (many of whom say that people tend to mistake it for field hockey, yet another niche sport), as well as a mention of the cancellation of the qualifying tournament for the 2022 World Cup (even though the piece doesn't get into the long and short of the real reason it was such a big deal)...
...and a late-breaking piece of news: With the UAE, hosts for the previous two Women's T20 Global Qualifiers, not qualifying on this occasion, the ICC are holding the 2026 Women's T20 Global Qualifier, for which Thailand has qualified, in Nepal, with two groups of five, followed by a Super Six stage and a Final, which means they're using the same format that was supposed to happen at the 2021 WODI qualifiers, and tacking on a redundant final at the end :-)
