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spiderbraidsFollowing the Women's Asia Cup Rising Stars, plus possible ideas for improving cricket's local standing :-)
Previously on Howzat, Thailand women's cricket contested another T20 Global Qualifier, and in a timeline where Thailand had gotten a fair shake from their Harare 2021 performance, we'd probably be reporting on better news than Thailand's 3rd straight elimination at these qualifiers... And for the 3rd qualifiers running, the team's final ranking declined from the previous edition (2019: 2nd[Q], 2022: 4th, 2024: 5th, 2026: 6th) Not to mention that they lost to the USA for the first time ever at the qualifiers, following a first-ever loss to Papua New Guinea at the Emerging Nations Trophy a few months earlier :-\ (As well as teams that we used to beat reliably like the UAE and the Dutch now getting the better of us) It feels like Thailand's lack of constant competition against quality teams (the "fair shake", if you will) has come home to roost; as Nishadh Rego had warned after Harare: "Let’s not forget the potential impacts of a multi-year fixture drought on Thailand." If Thailand's rise in the cricket world could be called a fairy tale, it now sure feels more like a lesser-known Hans Christian Andersen story (one in which a firework spark hitting the ground makes all the difference for its protagonist, so I think that comparison is apt)
Which has gotten me thinking about what can be done to improve the stature of cricket in our country and help slow down or even reverse this decline, especially in a country where local awareness is probably in the single digits (case in point, despite the team captivating fans of Associate cricket overseas for years, this local only learned about their existence thanks to that 2022 AFP article, and even our last great win over Pakistan later that year never got any coverage in the local press, nor had there been any for the World Cup) This 2019 article from just after Thailand's only World Cup qualification brags that "In (Suleeporn) Laomi’s early days, cricket was only played in four provinces. Today it is played in fourteen, at the senior, U-19 and U-16 levels." Which sounds nice and everything, but there are 77 provinces in the country, so that still leaves large swaths of the country untouched by the sport...
Well, to be fair, a few more provinces did pick up the sport after 2019... According the Cricket Association of Thailand's CricClubs site, 15 provinces contested the women's competition at the 49th National Games in 2024, either the finals in Chonburi, or the regional qualifiers, and when counting teams that had participated in the 47th and 48th Games (the ones for which CricClubs has data), 17 provinces have participated in the women's competition, and when extending to various youth competitions (National Youth Games plus the Association's own competitions), that number becomes 20... But that still leaves 57 provinces that have never sent a team to national competitions, almost 3/4 of the country (!) It also appears that the five provinces that didn't contest the most recent National Games noped out of further participation after just one go: The eastern provinces of Trat and Rayong participated in the qualifiers for the 2022 National Youth Games, another eastern province Srakaew participated in the Association's U15 competition in 2020, northeastern province Khonkaen (from where national team player Onnicha Kamchompoo hails) made it from qualifiers to the national finals of 47th National Games in 2022 but hasn't participated since, and western province Kanchanaburi (of Bridge over the River Kwae fame) participated in the 48th National Games in 2023, which they also hosted, with the participation of ex-national team players Sornnarin Tippoch (former captain, now development coach) and Wongpaka Liengprasert, alongside the then-still-active Nattaya Boochatham, even winning bronze (that said, although the seniors sat out the 49th Games, the juniors did play the most recent National Youth Games, and I'd hope that the now-retired Nattaya can spend her spare time helping to spread the sport in the province, maybe even alongside Sornnarin)
Let me just spitball some ideas, even if I have no illusions that anyone with any meaningful position at the Association would even stumble across this blog to read them (and for that matter, I also don't know if they're doing such things already) As I already hinted after the loss to the USA, one idea could be to adopt something similar to the US regional pathway model, which as of 2019, Thailand had, shall we say, "concepts of a plan", with 3 Centres of Excellence for the sport, but those were only in the north, east, and Bangkok, with none in the northeast (Thailand's largest and most populated region) nor the south (I mean, surely it'd make sense to use the Alan Cooke Ground in Phuket for this? I get that according to the article these are hosted by schools, but if you've got a ground, why not use that?) They're also effectively dependent on national-level competitions for scouting given that only two of the 5 national regions into which Thailand's sports authority splits the country, required qualifiers on the women's side to whittle them down teams for the last National Games (speaking of, the next one isn't being played until mid '27, over 2 years removed from the last one; normally the games are biennial, but as alluded to above, the last three were held in consecutive years, presumably to make up for not being able to hold the games during Covid... meanwhile, this year's Youth Games will not feature cricket, and the 2024 edition did not feature it either)
The USA model suggests that a healthier cricket ecosystem requires more lower-level competition and selection, which in turn requires more players, which in turn requires more awareness of the sport's existence... Other than the existing usage of regional qualifiers to hold matches in other provinces (which hasn't taken as well as I imagine the Association might have hoped since the hosting provinces don't always participate), one idea would be to offer schools or other sport-related bodies in such untouched provinces the opportunity to have the sport demonstrated to them (perhaps with help from existing national players or even expats?) and maybe even help organize smaller-scaled competitions (I envision splitting the national regions down further into small clusters of 4-5 provinces and then having teams within each cluster play each other before moving on to the intra-regional level, thus providing an extra layer of selection; provinces wouldn't necessarily be limited to just one team either, and maybe you could even have a "real" provincial championship)
Another issue is, as noted in an earlier Howzat, the lack of proper grounds in the country; many local tourneys have to make do with 100x70m soccer fields, which TBF are a pragmatic way to give cricket a foot in the door, and even some proper cricketing countries do sometimes use soccer-sized fields for cricket (example in Sri Lanka), so I wouldn't necessarily forbid games on such fields...
Still, such fields seem inadequate for proper competition except at junior youth levels; even for senior women, the ICC stipulates that "no boundary shall be longer than 70 yards (64 meters), and no boundary should be shorter than 60 yards (54.86 metres) from the centre of the pitch to be used", suggesting that grounds of at least 110x110 are the bare minimum... If you want to find players who can hit boundaries, you'd probably want to test them on a ground with proper dimensions, right?
So I'd suggest the Association could maybe look into temporary usage of suitably wide patches of land to hold matches (be it for demonstration, trials, or even competition): for example, I've noticed that many military facilities have large grass fields, presumably for gathering troops and vehicles, that based on size would look suitable, and I've also seen there are plenty of empty well-sized plots in industrial parks (factory worker cricket teams, anyone?), and at least one major local soccer team has a training ground of suitable size and arrangement (unusually, this ground has the floodlights all along the edges; a different team has a two-field training ground that would be suitable except for the floodlights separating said two fields, I suspect that such an arrangement is all-too-common)
Another possibility, in the absence of good grounds, would be to spread the concept of "box cricket", an indoor-ified and compact-ified version of the sport, currently apparently only being played locally at a small facility on the Thonburi side of the capital, across the country and (here's where I get a little pie-in-the-sky) maybe even figure out a way to adapt it to the country's semi-ubitiquous futsal fields to allow players to play and sharpen their skills even in the rainy season (well, at least for the fields with a roof above them) which in turn could even allow an entry point to cricket that isn't dependent on the availability of proper bats and balls... I already knew they're expensive and have to be imported, but I stumbled upon a dedicated store for selling cric equipment to Thai enthusiasts, where I found that real leather cric balls cost THB395, or over USD12, and while synthetic ones for training are only half that, that's still THB195, or over USD 6... Proper willow bats are THB6000 (USD180) minimum, and even non "match-legal" bats made with carbon fibre or coconut wood, designed to be used with softer balls, are in the THB2000 (USD60) range; the cheapest bat from this store is a simple "kiddy-style" plastic bat for training that costs THB650 (a shade under USD20) and is of course only suitable for tennis balls and softer (Meanwhile, iconic Windies player Brian Lara started playing using improvised bats made using coconut branches, and such coconut branch bats are also common in India as well, both of which this blog brings up... We've got plenty of coconut trees, and other kinds of palms too, so surely something can be done with that)
One more thing that I think the Association ought to look into is using the handful of existing proper grounds to help foster native talent; for starters, there are two grounds owned by the Royal Bangkok Sports Club downtown, which should make it a prime location to attract potential players compared to the remote Terdthai, but with the exception of the "Thailand Cricket Club" (mostly national men's team players), most of the teams that play there are all-expats, and given that the RBSC is an exclusive club, it's unlikely most Thais (to say nothing of Thai women, given these are men's competitions that play on these grounds) could ever hope to "naturally" get to know the gentleman's game... Perhaps maybe the Association could convince them to let them hold some open auditions there or something? Open auditions are how Sornnarin (and current captain Naruemol Chaiwai) got on to the team, according to the 2019 article; TBF that article also said that "gone are the days of open trials for national teams", but maybe doing it to help create lower-level native-only teams could help? Sure would be better than the current situation of being dependent on a dozen-or-so provinces (and in some cases, provincial towns of said provinces and not the capitals, such as the Chanthaburi Championship mainly being contested by a single provincial district :-\)
Obviously, I don't know if any of these concepts are viable, and in any case they'd require money (another thing of which the Harare issue deprived Thailand), for which there's both good news and bad news on that front: The ICC announced that "the Board approved an increase of nearly 10% in distribution for funds to its Associate Members for the year 2026." (Also, there's a plan to expand the ODI World Cup to 10 teams for the next one FWIW) OTOH, the Pakistan Cricket Board has threatened to boycott a match against India at the men's T20 World Cup in protest of the ICC refusing to move Bangladesh's games out of India, instead replacing Bangladesh with Scotland... This is a big deal because according to The Age, via Fox Sports Australia: "each game between India and Pakistan staged from 2023-2027, as part of the US$3 billion deal struck between the ICC and host broadcaster JioStar, has an estimated value of around US$250 million (AU$358 million). It’s why the ICC has manipulated scheduling to ensure the two nations have met during the group stage of every ICC men’s event across the last 13 years."
In response, the ICC wrote that "ICC tournaments are built on sporting integrity, competitiveness, consistency and fairness, and selective participation undermines the spirit and sanctity of the competitions." However, hypo dismissed it as "workshopping some material for their Netflix (comedy) special", i.e., an utter joke... And although no one made any mention of this while laughing off the ICC statement, arguably the whole mess with Thailand makes a very good counterexample to their claims; another article posted after Harare 2021 speculated that a roundtable to discuss their options in light of having to abandon those qualifiers may well have ended up arriving at the same exclusionary decision against Thailand, and argued that "the (ICC's) decisions themselves are almost never made in the true interests of global growth, rather in the interests of protecting status or revenue, or in unshackling the potential of prospective markets."
Obviously, a $250m financial hit would be a problem, and hypo opined, "Will this be a disaster for many who can't afford to take the hit? Almost certainly." While Bertus de Jong felt that it would hurt associates in the long run (wouldn't be the first time Associates were affected long-term by ICC shenanigans :-\)
With all this in mind, it almost feels ironic that Thailand's "newest" opportunity to match up their skills with the best cricketing nations is called Asia Cup Rising Stars, since they've been slowly falling for quite some time (but given Harare 2021, who could blame them?) It's not exactly a new tournament, as it's a rebranding of the Emerging Teams Asia Cup, and the Asian Cricket Council counts it as a continuation as this Tweet refers to India as the defending champions, but this is our first time competing, as despite being selected for the first one, we were replaced last-minute with Nepal due to visa issues :-\ This time we're hosting, and the fixtures list has us going up against Malaysia (14 Feb), then the A-teams from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (16 and 18 Feb); beating either of those teams (plus Malaysia obviously) would send us to the semis, to meet one of the top two of UAE, Nepal, and the A-teams of India and Pakistan playing in the other group, with all games being played at Terdthai Cricket Ground...
That said, a quick check of the weather a few days before the tournament suggested that at least one of those matches might be questionable: the 14 Feb match against Malaysia should be just fine, and the 16 Feb match with Bangladesh looks good (though earlier it looked to be rain-affected), and there's some morning rain on 18 Feb before the Sri Lanka match (not as much as all day before, however)
A minor digression before moving on (but it does eventually relate to Thailand women's cricket :-)) Before sitcom producer Michael Jacobs hit it big with Boy Meets World, he made a sitcom about the country-fried heartwarming family-friendly shenanigans of The Torkelsons :-) Now, I couldn't tell you the specific plot of any episode off the top of my head, except one in particular that's stuck with me all these years since I saw it way back in the '90s: So the main protagonist has made the finals of a student-exchange contest for a chance to move to France, and much of the episode is spent on her trying to put her best foot forward, so to speak, for the judges' family visit, in order to beat her more well-to-do competition, though she does write off the dorkier of her two opponents immediately... Since this is an old-school sitcom, your protagonist is not the winner (one of her sisters: "Ah, shoot" accompanied with laughtrack) but it's not for a lack of effort, or even family quality:
Protag: My family situation got high marks. They're still talking about my wonderful family. And they seem to like me...
Mom: Why did you lose?
Protag: Well, the family in France?
Mom: Yeah?
Protag: They wanted a boy :-\
And on cue, the dorky opponent she wrote off earlier, but happens to be the only finalist that fits that description, starts riding past the titular family on his bike spouting random French words as they look on in disbelief LOL. Even though I didn't understand the static nature of sitcoms back then, I thought that was a ridiculous/unfair/backwards way to lose (and that's more or less why it stuck with me)... and even now, it still feels like a transparent attempt to maintain the status quo :-\ It's played for laughs, but IRL you can understand it'd be very frustrating to put in your best effort to prepare, expecting your showing to matter, until it doesn't, because of a technicality based on something that was out of your hands since before the get-go, so you might as well have never bothered... right, Natthakan Chantham? (Since she's deleted her Twitter account since then, I don't have proof of this, but less-known than the linked Tweet is that she reacted to seeing Bangladesh playing their first-ever Women's ODI World Cup match with a crying emoji, because they'd actually beaten Bangladesh at Harare 2021 and it didn't matter)
Okay, first day of action saw Pakistan A against Nepal, and even the full-member's 2nd stringers were still the better of the first time global qualifier participant, 137-107... The more interesting match was the afternoon match between the defending champions India A against the UAE, and it seems like the UAE are getting out of their little slump that saw them lose to Nepal to miss said global qualifiers: After limiting India A to a slightly subpar 130, they managed to chase it down with 4 balls to spare with the help of Esha Oza's 72 from 61 balls (with a supporting turn from Samaira Dharnidharka, with 34 from 31 balls)
https://x.com/ACCMedia1/status/2022252080174694405#m
https://x.com/penlowarth1/status/2022284633682178491#m
That said, one of the replies to the Tweet announcing the latter win noted that it was "so poor that the ACC will not show a competition being held in Thailand, in Thailand." (Meanwhile, selected regions get it on SonyLIV streaming, and India gets it on TV... FWIW, a quick cursory check shows that amongst the participating countries, SonyLIV isn't available in Thailand, Malaysia and Pakistan [that last one's somewhat a surprise, but maybe not given their relations with India])
Thailand took to the field on the morning of Day 2, and proceeded to beat Malaysia by 99 runs, 169-70... Nannapat was tops for the Thais with 73, while Natthakan managed a mere 10, which actually means that Nannapat is less than 100 runs behind Natthakan in all time international T20 runs (2429 vs 2496) despite the latter being perceived as the star of the Thai team, and both players' stats being counted starting from the same match back in 2018... That said, Natthakan still has more career 6's than the rest of the team combined (26 to 23) Also having time at the bat were Arrikan Phuengkho, batting for the first time ever in a senior international T20 (4 from 3 balls) and Aphisara Suwanchonrathi (1 from 2 balls)
(A little digging into the stats also shows that despite being the second-highest scoring Thai batswoman ever, Nannapat has not had any 6's in her career, while captain Naruemol scored 4 of her five career 6's in the last 3 months)
"Because some wins are bigger than the scoreboard" was the title for the ACC's video showing the Thai team after beating Malaysia... But if there ever was a win for Thailand that really deserved to be bigger than the scoreboard, I'll give you one guess which one I'm thinking of here (Hint: Ultimately, a certain matter of status was bigger than that win :-\)
Later in the afternoon, Bangladesh A were bowled out for 115 on the penultimate ball, but managed to squeak by Sri Lanka A by 4 runs... Nothing much to say here really, though I do notice that some of Bangladesh A's players do share surnames with the seniors (two gals named Sultana, another named Ferdus; though surely not all the Akters on this scorecard are all related)
Day 3: Morning saw UAE beat Nepal 189-171, guided by a 125 (!!!) from Esha Oza, outscoring the best two Nepal batters combined (Samjhana Kumari 58 and Puja Mahato with 53) In the afternoon, India A bundled out Pakistan A for 93 in just under 19 overs, before passing the total in just a bit over 10 overs (Meanwhile in Sri Lanka, despite the threats of boycott, the Pakistan men's team ultimately decided to take to the field for their match against India, though the Indians also comfortably won their match 175-114)
Day 4: Morning saw the Lankans put up 172 runs in their 20 overs, with Malaysia only managing 66 in response... Afternoon saw Thailand go first and bat in 103 runs, with Natthakan and Nannapat contributing over half (24 and 34 respectively) Bangladesh stayed above Thailand's curve for much of the chase, but Thailand had made 19 runs in their 18th over, going from 72 to 91 (behind two boundaries each from Phannita and Onnicha) So Thailand would have been banking on that over to make the difference, and with Bangladesh reaching 84 after the 18th over, they probably must have been feeling good about themselves, given Bangladesh needed 20 from their last 12 balls, and their most productive overs up to this point was two 9-run overs... Well, never count out a full-member: After scoring 8 in the penultimate over to need "only" 12 in the last over, Shorifa Khatun scored a single before Farjana Easmin (at just 16) knocked in a maximum and a boundary on consecutive Phannita deliveries (though she did get out next ball), before Jannatul Ferdus knocked in a first-ball single on the penultimate ball to win by 3 wickets :-\ It should be noted that Jannatul has had some seniors experience (just 11 matches total, 7 ODIs and 4 T20s), and in fact this isn't her first rodeo against the Thais, skittling them a five-fer for just 7 runs at Lahore 2025 (which accounts for 5 of her matches) Proving once again that we need to improve our development program if a 16-year old could hit for 10 off two balls from one of our seniors (even if said senior is only 21 herself), with Arrikan, herself just 18, being held to just 1 run in 11 balls by the Bangladesh development squad (and since it's a development squad, it doesn't count as an official T20 international, like all our matches before June 2018; long story)
Day 5: Morning saw India A bounce back from the loss to the UAE by making relatively quick work of Nepal, bundling them out by 78 in 18 overs, then surpassing it in less than 8 overs... In the afternoon, the UAE managed a meagre 79 runs all out in 17 overs and 2 balls, with Pakistan chasing it down in exactly 11 overs, with one weird stat in particular: the UAE's 2nd wicket partnership between Theertha Satish and Samaira Dharnidharka officially lasted just one ball before Samaira was run out without actually getting to bat, but managed to score 6 runs, thanks to the UAE getting two wides of 5 and 1 from two uncounted deliveries before the run-out
Day 6: With no rainfall at Terdthai as previously forecast, morning saw Bangladesh A take on Malaysia, and after Bangladesh put up a 151-7 total, Malaysia only managed 61 in response, with only one batter reaching double digits (Arianna Natasya with 22) In the afternoon match, Thailand and Sri Lanka A played with a semi final spot on the line, and Sri Lanka A put up a somewhat feasible total of 133-5 in their overs (with Hansima Karunaratne getting a 62)... In their chase, Thailand stayed above Sri Lanka's worm curve up until over 14... In Sri Lanka A's innings, the Lankans scored 14 runs off of Natthakan (more on that anon) in over 14, and also scored 14 off Sunida Chaturongrattana in the next over; meanwhile, Thailand could only manage 5 in both overs, and once Natthakan was bowled out in over 17 (having scored "only" 57 runs), the Thai threat fizzled out, with the Lankans ultimately defending their total by 23 runs after Onnicha was unable to come to bat due to injury... Once again proving the gulf between the full members and the Associates that even the second-string of the full members are still better than the Associates' best (UAE upset notwithstanding; the heavy loss to Pakistan meant even they didn't make the semis, finishing behind them by about 1.2 NRR)
As noted above, batting stalwart Natthakan had a turn bowling, which she has never done in regular T20 internationals; she conceded 21 runs from 2 overs, but got one wicket, bowling out Ama Kanchana for 26 (that said, Kanchana also bowled Thipatcha out for the 9th and "last" wicket)
The ACC's video for Thailand after the end of the tournament said it was "Not the finish they dreamed of. But a journey full of heart." Somewhat-hackneyed praise aside, you could say that about every post-2020 international tournament they've entered (except maybe their semi-final berth in Asia Cup 2022 and the Emerging Nations Trophy win) The description ended with "This is only another step forward"... but after their major step backwards when they didn't get their fair shake from Harare 2021, I'm beginning to doubt that this generation will ever get back to where they were back then :-\ (At least, not without serious improvements to the pipeline)
So anyways, the business end was a full-members-only affair: In the first semi, the Lankans put up 118 runs before being bowled out in the last over, and India chased it down by the 14th over, while in the second, Bangladesh put up 110 in their overs and held Pakistan to 56 runs, bowling them out in exactly 100 balls... Then in the final, India A put up 134 runs in their over, and not only comfortably defended it, they ended up bowling Bangladesh A all-out for 88 in the final over, to defend their title from two years (and one name change) previous
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cricket/comments/1quqsci/thailand_to_host_japan_bhutan_and_bahrain_for_a/
Meanwhile for Thailand, there'll be an end of month test (not Test with a capital T, LOL) at home for the men with Japan, Bhutan and Bahrain :-)
Previously on Howzat, Thailand women's cricket contested another T20 Global Qualifier, and in a timeline where Thailand had gotten a fair shake from their Harare 2021 performance, we'd probably be reporting on better news than Thailand's 3rd straight elimination at these qualifiers... And for the 3rd qualifiers running, the team's final ranking declined from the previous edition (2019: 2nd[Q], 2022: 4th, 2024: 5th, 2026: 6th) Not to mention that they lost to the USA for the first time ever at the qualifiers, following a first-ever loss to Papua New Guinea at the Emerging Nations Trophy a few months earlier :-\ (As well as teams that we used to beat reliably like the UAE and the Dutch now getting the better of us) It feels like Thailand's lack of constant competition against quality teams (the "fair shake", if you will) has come home to roost; as Nishadh Rego had warned after Harare: "Let’s not forget the potential impacts of a multi-year fixture drought on Thailand." If Thailand's rise in the cricket world could be called a fairy tale, it now sure feels more like a lesser-known Hans Christian Andersen story (one in which a firework spark hitting the ground makes all the difference for its protagonist, so I think that comparison is apt)
Which has gotten me thinking about what can be done to improve the stature of cricket in our country and help slow down or even reverse this decline, especially in a country where local awareness is probably in the single digits (case in point, despite the team captivating fans of Associate cricket overseas for years, this local only learned about their existence thanks to that 2022 AFP article, and even our last great win over Pakistan later that year never got any coverage in the local press, nor had there been any for the World Cup) This 2019 article from just after Thailand's only World Cup qualification brags that "In (Suleeporn) Laomi’s early days, cricket was only played in four provinces. Today it is played in fourteen, at the senior, U-19 and U-16 levels." Which sounds nice and everything, but there are 77 provinces in the country, so that still leaves large swaths of the country untouched by the sport...
Well, to be fair, a few more provinces did pick up the sport after 2019... According the Cricket Association of Thailand's CricClubs site, 15 provinces contested the women's competition at the 49th National Games in 2024, either the finals in Chonburi, or the regional qualifiers, and when counting teams that had participated in the 47th and 48th Games (the ones for which CricClubs has data), 17 provinces have participated in the women's competition, and when extending to various youth competitions (National Youth Games plus the Association's own competitions), that number becomes 20... But that still leaves 57 provinces that have never sent a team to national competitions, almost 3/4 of the country (!) It also appears that the five provinces that didn't contest the most recent National Games noped out of further participation after just one go: The eastern provinces of Trat and Rayong participated in the qualifiers for the 2022 National Youth Games, another eastern province Srakaew participated in the Association's U15 competition in 2020, northeastern province Khonkaen (from where national team player Onnicha Kamchompoo hails) made it from qualifiers to the national finals of 47th National Games in 2022 but hasn't participated since, and western province Kanchanaburi (of Bridge over the River Kwae fame) participated in the 48th National Games in 2023, which they also hosted, with the participation of ex-national team players Sornnarin Tippoch (former captain, now development coach) and Wongpaka Liengprasert, alongside the then-still-active Nattaya Boochatham, even winning bronze (that said, although the seniors sat out the 49th Games, the juniors did play the most recent National Youth Games, and I'd hope that the now-retired Nattaya can spend her spare time helping to spread the sport in the province, maybe even alongside Sornnarin)
Let me just spitball some ideas, even if I have no illusions that anyone with any meaningful position at the Association would even stumble across this blog to read them (and for that matter, I also don't know if they're doing such things already) As I already hinted after the loss to the USA, one idea could be to adopt something similar to the US regional pathway model, which as of 2019, Thailand had, shall we say, "concepts of a plan", with 3 Centres of Excellence for the sport, but those were only in the north, east, and Bangkok, with none in the northeast (Thailand's largest and most populated region) nor the south (I mean, surely it'd make sense to use the Alan Cooke Ground in Phuket for this? I get that according to the article these are hosted by schools, but if you've got a ground, why not use that?) They're also effectively dependent on national-level competitions for scouting given that only two of the 5 national regions into which Thailand's sports authority splits the country, required qualifiers on the women's side to whittle them down teams for the last National Games (speaking of, the next one isn't being played until mid '27, over 2 years removed from the last one; normally the games are biennial, but as alluded to above, the last three were held in consecutive years, presumably to make up for not being able to hold the games during Covid... meanwhile, this year's Youth Games will not feature cricket, and the 2024 edition did not feature it either)
The USA model suggests that a healthier cricket ecosystem requires more lower-level competition and selection, which in turn requires more players, which in turn requires more awareness of the sport's existence... Other than the existing usage of regional qualifiers to hold matches in other provinces (which hasn't taken as well as I imagine the Association might have hoped since the hosting provinces don't always participate), one idea would be to offer schools or other sport-related bodies in such untouched provinces the opportunity to have the sport demonstrated to them (perhaps with help from existing national players or even expats?) and maybe even help organize smaller-scaled competitions (I envision splitting the national regions down further into small clusters of 4-5 provinces and then having teams within each cluster play each other before moving on to the intra-regional level, thus providing an extra layer of selection; provinces wouldn't necessarily be limited to just one team either, and maybe you could even have a "real" provincial championship)
Another issue is, as noted in an earlier Howzat, the lack of proper grounds in the country; many local tourneys have to make do with 100x70m soccer fields, which TBF are a pragmatic way to give cricket a foot in the door, and even some proper cricketing countries do sometimes use soccer-sized fields for cricket (example in Sri Lanka), so I wouldn't necessarily forbid games on such fields...
Still, such fields seem inadequate for proper competition except at junior youth levels; even for senior women, the ICC stipulates that "no boundary shall be longer than 70 yards (64 meters), and no boundary should be shorter than 60 yards (54.86 metres) from the centre of the pitch to be used", suggesting that grounds of at least 110x110 are the bare minimum... If you want to find players who can hit boundaries, you'd probably want to test them on a ground with proper dimensions, right?
So I'd suggest the Association could maybe look into temporary usage of suitably wide patches of land to hold matches (be it for demonstration, trials, or even competition): for example, I've noticed that many military facilities have large grass fields, presumably for gathering troops and vehicles, that based on size would look suitable, and I've also seen there are plenty of empty well-sized plots in industrial parks (factory worker cricket teams, anyone?), and at least one major local soccer team has a training ground of suitable size and arrangement (unusually, this ground has the floodlights all along the edges; a different team has a two-field training ground that would be suitable except for the floodlights separating said two fields, I suspect that such an arrangement is all-too-common)
Another possibility, in the absence of good grounds, would be to spread the concept of "box cricket", an indoor-ified and compact-ified version of the sport, currently apparently only being played locally at a small facility on the Thonburi side of the capital, across the country and (here's where I get a little pie-in-the-sky) maybe even figure out a way to adapt it to the country's semi-ubitiquous futsal fields to allow players to play and sharpen their skills even in the rainy season (well, at least for the fields with a roof above them) which in turn could even allow an entry point to cricket that isn't dependent on the availability of proper bats and balls... I already knew they're expensive and have to be imported, but I stumbled upon a dedicated store for selling cric equipment to Thai enthusiasts, where I found that real leather cric balls cost THB395, or over USD12, and while synthetic ones for training are only half that, that's still THB195, or over USD 6... Proper willow bats are THB6000 (USD180) minimum, and even non "match-legal" bats made with carbon fibre or coconut wood, designed to be used with softer balls, are in the THB2000 (USD60) range; the cheapest bat from this store is a simple "kiddy-style" plastic bat for training that costs THB650 (a shade under USD20) and is of course only suitable for tennis balls and softer (Meanwhile, iconic Windies player Brian Lara started playing using improvised bats made using coconut branches, and such coconut branch bats are also common in India as well, both of which this blog brings up... We've got plenty of coconut trees, and other kinds of palms too, so surely something can be done with that)
One more thing that I think the Association ought to look into is using the handful of existing proper grounds to help foster native talent; for starters, there are two grounds owned by the Royal Bangkok Sports Club downtown, which should make it a prime location to attract potential players compared to the remote Terdthai, but with the exception of the "Thailand Cricket Club" (mostly national men's team players), most of the teams that play there are all-expats, and given that the RBSC is an exclusive club, it's unlikely most Thais (to say nothing of Thai women, given these are men's competitions that play on these grounds) could ever hope to "naturally" get to know the gentleman's game... Perhaps maybe the Association could convince them to let them hold some open auditions there or something? Open auditions are how Sornnarin (and current captain Naruemol Chaiwai) got on to the team, according to the 2019 article; TBF that article also said that "gone are the days of open trials for national teams", but maybe doing it to help create lower-level native-only teams could help? Sure would be better than the current situation of being dependent on a dozen-or-so provinces (and in some cases, provincial towns of said provinces and not the capitals, such as the Chanthaburi Championship mainly being contested by a single provincial district :-\)
Obviously, I don't know if any of these concepts are viable, and in any case they'd require money (another thing of which the Harare issue deprived Thailand), for which there's both good news and bad news on that front: The ICC announced that "the Board approved an increase of nearly 10% in distribution for funds to its Associate Members for the year 2026." (Also, there's a plan to expand the ODI World Cup to 10 teams for the next one FWIW) OTOH, the Pakistan Cricket Board has threatened to boycott a match against India at the men's T20 World Cup in protest of the ICC refusing to move Bangladesh's games out of India, instead replacing Bangladesh with Scotland... This is a big deal because according to The Age, via Fox Sports Australia: "each game between India and Pakistan staged from 2023-2027, as part of the US$3 billion deal struck between the ICC and host broadcaster JioStar, has an estimated value of around US$250 million (AU$358 million). It’s why the ICC has manipulated scheduling to ensure the two nations have met during the group stage of every ICC men’s event across the last 13 years."
In response, the ICC wrote that "ICC tournaments are built on sporting integrity, competitiveness, consistency and fairness, and selective participation undermines the spirit and sanctity of the competitions." However, hypo dismissed it as "workshopping some material for their Netflix (comedy) special", i.e., an utter joke... And although no one made any mention of this while laughing off the ICC statement, arguably the whole mess with Thailand makes a very good counterexample to their claims; another article posted after Harare 2021 speculated that a roundtable to discuss their options in light of having to abandon those qualifiers may well have ended up arriving at the same exclusionary decision against Thailand, and argued that "the (ICC's) decisions themselves are almost never made in the true interests of global growth, rather in the interests of protecting status or revenue, or in unshackling the potential of prospective markets."
Obviously, a $250m financial hit would be a problem, and hypo opined, "Will this be a disaster for many who can't afford to take the hit? Almost certainly." While Bertus de Jong felt that it would hurt associates in the long run (wouldn't be the first time Associates were affected long-term by ICC shenanigans :-\)
With all this in mind, it almost feels ironic that Thailand's "newest" opportunity to match up their skills with the best cricketing nations is called Asia Cup Rising Stars, since they've been slowly falling for quite some time (but given Harare 2021, who could blame them?) It's not exactly a new tournament, as it's a rebranding of the Emerging Teams Asia Cup, and the Asian Cricket Council counts it as a continuation as this Tweet refers to India as the defending champions, but this is our first time competing, as despite being selected for the first one, we were replaced last-minute with Nepal due to visa issues :-\ This time we're hosting, and the fixtures list has us going up against Malaysia (14 Feb), then the A-teams from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (16 and 18 Feb); beating either of those teams (plus Malaysia obviously) would send us to the semis, to meet one of the top two of UAE, Nepal, and the A-teams of India and Pakistan playing in the other group, with all games being played at Terdthai Cricket Ground...
That said, a quick check of the weather a few days before the tournament suggested that at least one of those matches might be questionable: the 14 Feb match against Malaysia should be just fine, and the 16 Feb match with Bangladesh looks good (though earlier it looked to be rain-affected), and there's some morning rain on 18 Feb before the Sri Lanka match (not as much as all day before, however)
A minor digression before moving on (but it does eventually relate to Thailand women's cricket :-)) Before sitcom producer Michael Jacobs hit it big with Boy Meets World, he made a sitcom about the country-fried heartwarming family-friendly shenanigans of The Torkelsons :-) Now, I couldn't tell you the specific plot of any episode off the top of my head, except one in particular that's stuck with me all these years since I saw it way back in the '90s: So the main protagonist has made the finals of a student-exchange contest for a chance to move to France, and much of the episode is spent on her trying to put her best foot forward, so to speak, for the judges' family visit, in order to beat her more well-to-do competition, though she does write off the dorkier of her two opponents immediately... Since this is an old-school sitcom, your protagonist is not the winner (one of her sisters: "Ah, shoot" accompanied with laughtrack) but it's not for a lack of effort, or even family quality:
Protag: My family situation got high marks. They're still talking about my wonderful family. And they seem to like me...
Mom: Why did you lose?
Protag: Well, the family in France?
Mom: Yeah?
Protag: They wanted a boy :-\
And on cue, the dorky opponent she wrote off earlier, but happens to be the only finalist that fits that description, starts riding past the titular family on his bike spouting random French words as they look on in disbelief LOL. Even though I didn't understand the static nature of sitcoms back then, I thought that was a ridiculous/unfair/backwards way to lose (and that's more or less why it stuck with me)... and even now, it still feels like a transparent attempt to maintain the status quo :-\ It's played for laughs, but IRL you can understand it'd be very frustrating to put in your best effort to prepare, expecting your showing to matter, until it doesn't, because of a technicality based on something that was out of your hands since before the get-go, so you might as well have never bothered... right, Natthakan Chantham? (Since she's deleted her Twitter account since then, I don't have proof of this, but less-known than the linked Tweet is that she reacted to seeing Bangladesh playing their first-ever Women's ODI World Cup match with a crying emoji, because they'd actually beaten Bangladesh at Harare 2021 and it didn't matter)
Okay, first day of action saw Pakistan A against Nepal, and even the full-member's 2nd stringers were still the better of the first time global qualifier participant, 137-107... The more interesting match was the afternoon match between the defending champions India A against the UAE, and it seems like the UAE are getting out of their little slump that saw them lose to Nepal to miss said global qualifiers: After limiting India A to a slightly subpar 130, they managed to chase it down with 4 balls to spare with the help of Esha Oza's 72 from 61 balls (with a supporting turn from Samaira Dharnidharka, with 34 from 31 balls)
https://x.com/ACCMedia1/status/2022252080174694405#m
https://x.com/penlowarth1/status/2022284633682178491#m
That said, one of the replies to the Tweet announcing the latter win noted that it was "so poor that the ACC will not show a competition being held in Thailand, in Thailand." (Meanwhile, selected regions get it on SonyLIV streaming, and India gets it on TV... FWIW, a quick cursory check shows that amongst the participating countries, SonyLIV isn't available in Thailand, Malaysia and Pakistan [that last one's somewhat a surprise, but maybe not given their relations with India])
Thailand took to the field on the morning of Day 2, and proceeded to beat Malaysia by 99 runs, 169-70... Nannapat was tops for the Thais with 73, while Natthakan managed a mere 10, which actually means that Nannapat is less than 100 runs behind Natthakan in all time international T20 runs (2429 vs 2496) despite the latter being perceived as the star of the Thai team, and both players' stats being counted starting from the same match back in 2018... That said, Natthakan still has more career 6's than the rest of the team combined (26 to 23) Also having time at the bat were Arrikan Phuengkho, batting for the first time ever in a senior international T20 (4 from 3 balls) and Aphisara Suwanchonrathi (1 from 2 balls)
(A little digging into the stats also shows that despite being the second-highest scoring Thai batswoman ever, Nannapat has not had any 6's in her career, while captain Naruemol scored 4 of her five career 6's in the last 3 months)
"Because some wins are bigger than the scoreboard" was the title for the ACC's video showing the Thai team after beating Malaysia... But if there ever was a win for Thailand that really deserved to be bigger than the scoreboard, I'll give you one guess which one I'm thinking of here (Hint: Ultimately, a certain matter of status was bigger than that win :-\)
Later in the afternoon, Bangladesh A were bowled out for 115 on the penultimate ball, but managed to squeak by Sri Lanka A by 4 runs... Nothing much to say here really, though I do notice that some of Bangladesh A's players do share surnames with the seniors (two gals named Sultana, another named Ferdus; though surely not all the Akters on this scorecard are all related)
Day 3: Morning saw UAE beat Nepal 189-171, guided by a 125 (!!!) from Esha Oza, outscoring the best two Nepal batters combined (Samjhana Kumari 58 and Puja Mahato with 53) In the afternoon, India A bundled out Pakistan A for 93 in just under 19 overs, before passing the total in just a bit over 10 overs (Meanwhile in Sri Lanka, despite the threats of boycott, the Pakistan men's team ultimately decided to take to the field for their match against India, though the Indians also comfortably won their match 175-114)
Day 4: Morning saw the Lankans put up 172 runs in their 20 overs, with Malaysia only managing 66 in response... Afternoon saw Thailand go first and bat in 103 runs, with Natthakan and Nannapat contributing over half (24 and 34 respectively) Bangladesh stayed above Thailand's curve for much of the chase, but Thailand had made 19 runs in their 18th over, going from 72 to 91 (behind two boundaries each from Phannita and Onnicha) So Thailand would have been banking on that over to make the difference, and with Bangladesh reaching 84 after the 18th over, they probably must have been feeling good about themselves, given Bangladesh needed 20 from their last 12 balls, and their most productive overs up to this point was two 9-run overs... Well, never count out a full-member: After scoring 8 in the penultimate over to need "only" 12 in the last over, Shorifa Khatun scored a single before Farjana Easmin (at just 16) knocked in a maximum and a boundary on consecutive Phannita deliveries (though she did get out next ball), before Jannatul Ferdus knocked in a first-ball single on the penultimate ball to win by 3 wickets :-\ It should be noted that Jannatul has had some seniors experience (just 11 matches total, 7 ODIs and 4 T20s), and in fact this isn't her first rodeo against the Thais, skittling them a five-fer for just 7 runs at Lahore 2025 (which accounts for 5 of her matches) Proving once again that we need to improve our development program if a 16-year old could hit for 10 off two balls from one of our seniors (even if said senior is only 21 herself), with Arrikan, herself just 18, being held to just 1 run in 11 balls by the Bangladesh development squad (and since it's a development squad, it doesn't count as an official T20 international, like all our matches before June 2018; long story)
Day 5: Morning saw India A bounce back from the loss to the UAE by making relatively quick work of Nepal, bundling them out by 78 in 18 overs, then surpassing it in less than 8 overs... In the afternoon, the UAE managed a meagre 79 runs all out in 17 overs and 2 balls, with Pakistan chasing it down in exactly 11 overs, with one weird stat in particular: the UAE's 2nd wicket partnership between Theertha Satish and Samaira Dharnidharka officially lasted just one ball before Samaira was run out without actually getting to bat, but managed to score 6 runs, thanks to the UAE getting two wides of 5 and 1 from two uncounted deliveries before the run-out
Day 6: With no rainfall at Terdthai as previously forecast, morning saw Bangladesh A take on Malaysia, and after Bangladesh put up a 151-7 total, Malaysia only managed 61 in response, with only one batter reaching double digits (Arianna Natasya with 22) In the afternoon match, Thailand and Sri Lanka A played with a semi final spot on the line, and Sri Lanka A put up a somewhat feasible total of 133-5 in their overs (with Hansima Karunaratne getting a 62)... In their chase, Thailand stayed above Sri Lanka's worm curve up until over 14... In Sri Lanka A's innings, the Lankans scored 14 runs off of Natthakan (more on that anon) in over 14, and also scored 14 off Sunida Chaturongrattana in the next over; meanwhile, Thailand could only manage 5 in both overs, and once Natthakan was bowled out in over 17 (having scored "only" 57 runs), the Thai threat fizzled out, with the Lankans ultimately defending their total by 23 runs after Onnicha was unable to come to bat due to injury... Once again proving the gulf between the full members and the Associates that even the second-string of the full members are still better than the Associates' best (UAE upset notwithstanding; the heavy loss to Pakistan meant even they didn't make the semis, finishing behind them by about 1.2 NRR)
As noted above, batting stalwart Natthakan had a turn bowling, which she has never done in regular T20 internationals; she conceded 21 runs from 2 overs, but got one wicket, bowling out Ama Kanchana for 26 (that said, Kanchana also bowled Thipatcha out for the 9th and "last" wicket)
The ACC's video for Thailand after the end of the tournament said it was "Not the finish they dreamed of. But a journey full of heart." Somewhat-hackneyed praise aside, you could say that about every post-2020 international tournament they've entered (except maybe their semi-final berth in Asia Cup 2022 and the Emerging Nations Trophy win) The description ended with "This is only another step forward"... but after their major step backwards when they didn't get their fair shake from Harare 2021, I'm beginning to doubt that this generation will ever get back to where they were back then :-\ (At least, not without serious improvements to the pipeline)
So anyways, the business end was a full-members-only affair: In the first semi, the Lankans put up 118 runs before being bowled out in the last over, and India chased it down by the 14th over, while in the second, Bangladesh put up 110 in their overs and held Pakistan to 56 runs, bowling them out in exactly 100 balls... Then in the final, India A put up 134 runs in their over, and not only comfortably defended it, they ended up bowling Bangladesh A all-out for 88 in the final over, to defend their title from two years (and one name change) previous
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cricket/comments/1quqsci/thailand_to_host_japan_bhutan_and_bahrain_for_a/
Meanwhile for Thailand, there'll be an end of month test (not Test with a capital T, LOL) at home for the men with Japan, Bhutan and Bahrain :-)
