Hong Kong T20 Blitz is nothing but a new Cricket tournament played in Asia. It started from 2016 only. There were only four teams who are franchised played in that tournament. Asia is a continent where cricket is really very popular among the people and the viewership increases a large amount when it comes to cricket for Asian people.
This tournament consists of Round Robin matches along with a final match. Only 5 teams were there in the last time. The current champion of this tournament is Kowloon Cantons. Hung Hom JD Jaguars are the current trophy holder in this great tournament of Hong Kong.
The record of making the most number of runs in this tournament is held by Dwayne Smith with the run of 259 which is very impressive for this small scale tournament. And similarly the most number of wickets is taken by Saeed Ajmal with 11 wickets in his pocket. There is a long list of broadcasting partners who took up the franchise of this tournament and made it grand.
Hong Kong T20 Blitz History
The history of this tournament is really impressive in terms of the foundation and sponsorship issues. This tournament was established for the first time in 2016 in Hong Kong to promote the trend of cricket in other countries in Asia.
The tournament started with only 4 teams playing with each other in round robin matches and a final match at last decided the winners in the Twenty 20 format only. The sponsors list went very high after the start of this tournament. So many companies decided to sponsor this Blitz to increase their business also.
It was announced that DTC Mobiles sponsors the tournament right now and also the Leonine Sports Groups acquired one of the teams in the tournament in the 2nd season of this and changed the name of the team. This way the team Woodworm Island Warriors became Hong Kong Island, United of HKI United.
Then a 5th team, which came to participate, was City KaiTak. And the number of teams increased by one and the progress of the tournament popularity started to increase in a certain extent. This tournament is marketed by Hong Kong Cricket Associations by their YouTube channel which is a very good way to promote something currently as the digital media is a new cool right now.
Dean Jones, Jack Richards and very famous Katherine Loughnan of Fox Sports hosted this tournament and they were the commentators also for all the matches. Mainly Neo Sports is the network partner for all the Asian countries.
For Australia, it is Fox Sports, for the UK it is BT Sports, for Arab world, it is OSN Sports, for West Indies it is ESPN Caribbean and for African countries it is Star Times. So there is the different TV partners available for different countries and so the hype about this tournament is increasing day by day.
Teams and Tournament
The tournament started off with only four teams only at the initial stage. Then the number of teams increased later on. They play round robin matches between each other and lastly the final match to decide the Championship winner.
There were strict rules regarding the domestic players playing in the tournament, which was made on 28th April, 2016. A draft was made to decide this issue. But all the four teams recruited international players to their lineup to enhance the performance level by some renowned players of the world.
The famous captain of Hong Kong National Cricket Team was chosen at the beginning by Woodworm Island Warriors named Tanwir Afzal. Then the 5th team joined the tournament in 2017. Then 5 franchises recruited 5 chinese players who had shown their talent till the in their lineup.
But till 2018, they didn’t get the chance to play in the eleven. The teams are mostly from Hong Kong only. Kowloon Cantons were from Kowloon with Babar Hayat as their captain, Hung Hom JD Jaguars was from Hung Hom with captain Kinchit Shah, Galaxy Gladiators Lantau was from Lantau who had their captain from international players, Kumar Sangakara, HK Island United from Hong Kong Island with Tanwir Afzal as their captain and City KaiTak from Kai Tak with Rayad Emrit as captain. All the teams have their home ground in Mission Road ground and all the matches were played on Mission Road Ground only in this tournament. In 2016, the final match was abandoned and two joint winners were there. One was Hong Kong Island Warriors and other one was Kowloon Cantons.
So no player of the series award was given to anyone that year. Then in 2017, Kowloon Cantons won by 25 runs defeating City KaiTak and Chris Jordan won the award of player of the series. Then in 2018, Hung Hom JD Jaguars won the tournament by 6 runs against Galaxy Gladiators Lantau and Kumar Sangakara was the player of the series.
The main format of this tournament was round robin matches among the 5 teams. All the matches are played in the Mission Road Ground every year in Mong Kok. This tournament is like the new wave of cricket in the Asian countries like Hong Kong as the mainstream cricket team is not there at all and they don’t participate in international tournaments played.
So this step was taken to promote the cricket there in a large manner and so the championship began. It was first started with very small manner but then it got expanded and telecasted worldwide by different broadcasting partners. So it has now become famous somehow.
And the popularity is not only because of the association, the teams are also working hard to establish themselves. The extra effort was to hire the international players to extend their brand value more. So it is the tournament which is a great step towards the popularity of cricket in other countries than the countries who play mainstream cricket.
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