Korea cricket team to play expats

By John Redmond

The ROK National Men's Cricket Team and the ANZIK (Australian and New Zealands) Tigers Cricket Club will play each other on March 27 at Sungkyunkwan University’s Suwon campus.

The match is a charity meet-up to help raise funds for the New Zealand Red Cross for the Christchurch earthquake recovery.

Both teams are members of the Korea Cricket Association (KCA). The KCA is comprised of two Korean and Pakistani teams; one each from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; the ANZIK Tiger (Australian and New Zealanders); and Broughtons International 11, a mixture of expats.

The KCA is part of the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) East-Asia Pacific region that includes teams from Japan, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Cook Islands, Indonesia, the Philippines, Samoa, South Korea, Tonga and Vanuatu.

The charity match also coincides with the training schedule for the ROK National Team who, for the first time ever, will participate in an international tournament ― part of the ICC East Asia Pacific Division 2 Trophy to be held in Apia, Samoa between April 4 and 8. The Korean team has been training three times a week for the past two months and are said to be shaping up quite nicely. The charity match will be their final training session before they leave, and should be a good way to kick off the 2011 cricket season in Korea.

Spectatorship is free and organizers are hoping to get as many people as possible to attend the match and make an afternoon of it. Prizes will be raffled, and a donation box will be passed around.

The game will begin at 1 p.m. at the university’s Sports Ground, a five minute walk from Sungkyunkwan University Station on Line 1.