By Revata S. Silva
The inaugural meeting of the development committee of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) ended last Saturday at the Jaic Hilton Tower,Colombo after a two days of detailed discusion on expanding and developing cricket in Asia.

Thilanga Sumathipala, president of the ACC and Duleep Mendis represented Sri Lanka while P.Krishnasamy, J.Shah, Anil Kalaver and Mazhar Khan represented Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) respectively as those four countries have been recognised by the ACC as ‘Fast Track Countries’ enjoying more cricket-friendly demographical and popularity factors than many of the other thirty Asian nations taken into consideration.

At the press briefing held last Saturday immediately after the end of the meeting, Sumathipala stressed that the committee will receive money up to US$, 36m chiefly from the ICC funds, in the first year of operation and the expenditure will rise up to more than US$ 80m by the year 2005.

According to Sumathipala, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in SriLanka (BCCSL), the ACC development committee hopes two more one-day-international level sides will emerge from the four Fast Track Countries by the year 2005, and Duleep Mendis has been appointed as chairman of the committee for the first two years .

The ACC emphasises its goal as ‘making Asia the strongest cricketing nation in the world’ and one of its main objectives will be to expand the game in other parts of Asia where cricket has been so far unheard of.

Sumathipala who has been emphasisng the flourishing commercial aspect of cricket states, in a printed presentation submitted to the media, that "more cricket playing nations means more games, more spectators, more sponsership and ultimately more funds for the good of the game" and the ACC works to "maintain the high profile of national players to optimise their marketability".

In the Asian region where there already are four test playng countries, Bangladesh, the newest country to gain the ICC full membership, is seen as the cricket’s most commercially prospective region in the globe because of its massive population and the ever increasing popularity of cricket and cricketers.

But it is not very much known that the countries like Thailand, Maldives, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman are members of the ACC as well as the ICC.

It was decided at this meeting to hold an ACC tournament, a Youth Asia Cup and under-15 and 17 championships amongst non-test playing Asian countries. Some events like under-15 and 17 championships will be played by the test countries as well.