What will the result do for Hong Kong cricket? Not much, on the face of it. They’ve been eliminated from the Asia Cup, and their ODIs – rare, after they recently lost the status – both ended in defeat.

There is, however, an opportunity. Tim Cutler, the former Hong Kong Cricket CEO, their first in the role between 2015 and 2017, believes the performance against India provides good leverage for the bosses back home to exploit.

“Nevertheless, we must not forget cricket only has football ahead of it for investment in its emerging nations’ development.”

One of those decisions was to restrict the upcoming World Cup in 2019 to a 10-team event – like Hong Kong showed yesterday, and other Associate sides have in the past, they can compete against the biggies. But on evidence so far, it’s all fallen on deaf ears.

But, again, there is a sense of optimism, with Cutler hoping that David Richardson’s successor as ICC chief executive keeps an eye on the bigger picture.

So close, but so far.

Thank you to everyone for the support. Congrats to @BCCI for the win. We couldn’t pull it off, but we gave it a good go.

This may be our last ODI for the time being, but we’ve got plenty in store for the future. Stay tuned to find out!

GA YAU HONG KONG!

— Hong Kong Cricket (@CricketHK) September 18, 2018

“The ICC have an amazing opportunity here, with David Richardson stepping down,” said Cutler. “The eyes of the cricket world is really looking to Dubai to see who they choose. It will be telling of the type of organisation the ICC wants to be.

“Hopefully, the performances like last night along with ICC’s Project Wildfire, which is about growing the game everywhere, will help even more in ICC’s efforts to make cricket ‘the world’s favourite sport’.”

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