Hong Kong Women

Nepal, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia keep coming up whenever the tournament matters — the Asian Cricket Council groups Hong Kong Women with that cluster of sides at its Twenty20 championships, and China has featured too, most pointedly in the 2011 final in Guangzhou, which Hong Kong won. There is no single fixture the players single out as a derby; the competitive edge shows up instead across a run of ACC meetings and Asian Games appearances against the same four or five opponents.

That 2011 result followed the team's first title two years earlier, when it beat Thailand in the final of the inaugural ACC Women's Twenty20 Championship. Both wins came under the coaching of Charlie Burke. The side has since added two editions of the Women's Twenty20 East Asia Cup, in 2017 and 2022, beating Japan in both finals.

Full Twenty20 International status arrived only in 2019, with a debut against Indonesia in Bangkok that January — well over a decade after the side had first taken the field for a one-day series against Pakistan in Lahore. Mariko Hill has since become the leading run-scorer in the format and, in 2024, the first Hong Kong player to reach a century in a Women's T20I. Mamatha Maben took over as head coach late that same year. Home games are shared between the Hong Kong Cricket Club ground and the Mission Road Ground in Kowloon.

None of that was in place at the start. Hong Kong Women stepped onto the international stage in September 2006, in Lahore, under their first coach, Nasir Hameed, with no titles yet to their name.