Asian Games: the Hong Kong experts from cricket, cycling and horse racing making sure Hangzhou event runs smoothly
- Cricket Hong Kong’s head groundsman Jashim Uddin helped build a ground from scratch for this year’s tournament
- Well-respected cycling officials Alex Wong and Walter Yu to lead panels ensuring UCI rules upheld
When the Asian Games open in Hangzhou in a little more than two months’ time, Jashim Uddin can sit back and enjoy the cricket matches – playing out on the ground he helped build from scratch.
And with local organisers lacking the know-how when it came creating a cricket ground, Uddin said “guiding them remotely” on how to do it properly had been the biggest challenge of all.
The head groundsman for Cricket Hong Kong, Uddin is no stranger to working at an Asian Games, having done so in Guangzhou in 2010, and said he been “honoured to help”.
“There was no cricket ground in Hangzhou, so we started everything from zero,” he said. “But the grass and clay in China are up to standard and suitable for the sport, and that helped smooth our work.”
Uddin, who has 40 years of experience as a groundsman, is one of the only two in the region considered qualified by the Asian Cricket Council to oversee the creation of a new facility.
“I was monitoring the project remotely and had Zoom meetings with China from the start to update the status, offering advice for the grass and clay to make it happen,” he said.
