This weekend I took part in a 4 team cricket competition down in Chiayi. I only recently learned that cricket was played here at all on the island. There was a team of expats from Taipei and another from Kaoushiung, most of the players came from the UK, South Africa, Australia, NZ and India. There were also two teams of Pakistanis based in Taipei and Taichung. I was impressed at how high the standard of play was, some of the bowling and batting was of a very good standard.
Over the two days the teams all had to play each other in a round robin format with the top two reaching the final.
The competition took place inevitably at a baseball stadium with a few concessions made due to the circumstances. The baseball pitcher's mound was in the outfield on one side. The bowlers all bowled from the same end, so the batsmen had to swap over at the end of each over. The wicket was a green mat normally found in the nets laid out on the orange gravel.
The matches were 14 overs per innings - a shortened version of the shortened game which led to quite a bit of slogging and clambering over fences to retrieve balls hit for 6.
The only shame for me was despite there being many countries represented there weren't any Taiwanese players, it is a shame that none were invited to witness this alternative to baseball. One Canadian had divided loyalties, he sneaked across to join the baseball players practicing on the ground next door for a while.
Once again it was a very hot day (temperatures are very gradually starting to drop in Taiwan but it is still over 30 a lot of the time). My side had to play back to back matches and we ended up fielding in the first game and then going straight back in the field again for the next game.
