Credit to Nitesh Hemlani, HKUST student
Cricket has always been my passion. From a young age I used to follow the sport obsessively, and spend all my evenings playing it with my friends, or on the computer if they were all busy. For a good chunk of my childhood, Cricket was my life.
Therefore, one of my primary concerns before coming to HKUST was about if there was any Cricket. Sure, stuff like studies, housing, social life and food mattered, but not as much as Cricket. I had to play Cricket, I couldn't imagine a life without it. And so you can imagine my joy when, on my very first day at HKUST, I met a couple of people who knew of cricket practice being held at the UST ground on 8 AM the coming Saturday morning.
Yup, you read that right. 8 AM, on a SATURDAY. And if that wasn't bad enough, I lived in Jordan. This meant that I would have to get up at 6 AM and catch one of the first trains out in order to make it to UST in time for the practice.
But hey, I'll do anything for a game of cricket.
And so I went, and thus began one of the few habits I've stuck to in UST. Pretty much every Saturday morning I am down at the soccer field by 8 AM in order to play some cricket with the UST team – a group that consists of full-time UG and PG students, and some staff and Alumni. I have been lucky to represent UST in some of their matches, which are usually held on Sundays from 12-5.
However, until the start of this semester, Cricket was not yet an officially recognised sport in HKUST. That meant we had no support from the Uni for our matches, equipment, or general promotion of sport. So with the help of a team of dedicated UG students, some extremely helpful staff at the SAO, and a lot of time, effort and passion, we finally managed to start the HKUST Cricket Club and got affiliated with the Students Union.
This was a big moment for us, and didn't come without its hardships. Despite facing a lot of obstacles initially, we managed to accomplish a lot more than we imagined. We started up Cricket Sports Skills Classes, held Experience Cricket workshops for beginners, worked with the HKCA in promoting the sport in UST, worked with the other sports clubs on proposals for renovations to existing facilities, and managed to secure an extra practice venue along with some new equipment - so that the future generation of HKUST Cricketers will not be forced, as I was, to get up on a Saturday morning at 8 AM for their dose of cricket.
It's been a fantastic experience working to promote this sport here in UST, and we hope we can build on all this effort in the coming year.
