Now Cricket In North Korea!

By Richard Spencer in Beijing

North Korea is to host its first cricket tournament, with an English team taking on the home state's finest in Pyongyang next week.

The three visiting teams for the Twenty20 tournament will be largely expatriates from England, Australia, South Africa and Holland who are based in Shanghai.

The North Korean side will be boosted by staff from the Indian and Pakistani embassies.

The tournament was planned by Bryan Clark, a British employee of the logistics firm DHL, which has an office in Pyongyang, and the Shanghai Cricket Club, which has been leading attempts to develop the game in China.

There is now a cricket league in Shanghai and it includes teams from the city's leading universities.

Ainsley Mann, who oversees development for the Shanghai club, said North Korea seemed like a challenge.

"We were also running out of new venues to play," said Mr Mann, who runs Coca-Cola's bottling operations in China.

The games will be played in Taesongsan Park, usually the setting for May Day dances.

It was the only place in Pyongyang with a suitable expanse of grass

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/24/wnkorea124.xml