Shu played his first competitive game in Lincs on Sunday, scoring 73 not out for the Cleethorpes Academy team at home to a strong Holton-le-Clay side.
With the Meggies chasing 121 in 40 overs, he opened and looked a great prospect - very good on the legside and at working the ball off his legs. He's also a top fielder as well, with a great arm.
Graham Hackney at Cleethorpes has kindly sent Lincs Cricket Latest a couple of photos he took of Shu at the weekend.
Shu has been coached in Pakistan by legendary batsman Test batsman Javed Miandad.
OUR THANKS TO MATT SMITH FOR THE FOLLOWING ABOUT CRICKET IN CHINA...
Shuyao was picked out for the national team very soon after starting to learn cricket at Shenyang Sports University. He would probably have not played any matches at this point. He spent a good proportion of his time at university training and playing either with the national team or his university team.
I've seen him develop over the past four years, and by about two years ago, it was clear he could play a bit. Batting has proved particularly difficult for Chinese students to get to grips with, especially those who have only started at university, so seeing someone who could play with a straight bat, choose his shots wisely and play within himself, was particularly impressive. He was very quick in the field and had obviously worked hard at this. Rashid Khan calls him Jonty.
In the last two years he seems to have learnt a lot about the game. As well as having a spell in Pakistan, training under the supervision of Javed Miandad, and playing at several tournaments in Asia, he's just incredibly keen to learn about the game. He watches any cricket video he can get his hands on - looking carefully, analysing and trying to copy what he sees. Whilst this might seem quite normal for a young cricketer in Britain, cricket is simply not broadcast here and the videos we have are basically incomprehensible to the majority of players, given their limited English skills.
I've seen Shuyao make a couple of very good scores and he clearly has the kind of feel for the game that is still elusive to most of the Chinese players. Given this grasp of the game, his relatively strong English and his all-round demeanor, I was pretty sure he could both benefit from a season at the club and contribute greatly.
Shuyao comes from Tieling - pronounced Tia (as in Tia Maria) and Ling, as you would expect) - it in Liaoning Province, about an hour's drive from the provincial capital, Shenyang, about 400 miles NE of Beijing.
Tieling is a pretty modest little city by Chinese standards, but quite well known because it was the home of China's most famous comedian, Zhao Benshan. Zhao famously referred to it as "the big city".
This whole area, northeastern China, was occupied by the Japanese from the 1930s through to the end of the war. It was a very important industrial base, with natural resources aplenty, but is now sometimes referred to as the rust belt. Many of the massive state industries which powered China's early development have now closed down.
Sport in China is generally all about winning medals. There is considerable spending on Olympic sports and some promising athletes are selected to train in specialist sporting schools.
Shuyao has an older sister. His parents are retired factory workers (people tend to retire pretty early here). The family is very supportive of him, but putting him through university and giving him enough to live on whilst in England will have been quite a pressure for them.
Shuyao went to a regular middle school and high school (sixth form), rather than a sports school, but would have been accepted at Shenyang Sports University at least in part on the basis of his general sporting ability.
He studied Physical Education, with the intention of specialising in tennis, though I'm not sure how much tennis he's ever played - he was picked up by the cricket team early on.
Cricket in China is obviously pretty new. There was expat cricket way back, but it remained basically unknown to the Chinese until the ICC linked up with the Chinese Sports Ministry around 2003 or 2004, and the Chinese Cricket Association was formed.
Sports coaches from around the country - school and university sports teachers - were invited to training courses run by with the support of the Asian Cricket Council and, I believe, Cricket Australia.
There were several waves of these residential courses, with sports teachers being given an introduction to cricket - a sport that most of them had not even heard of, never mind seen. At the end of the course, the coaches were each given a 'club kit bag' and told to go and teach kids to play cricket. I guess most of the kit bags ended up either in storage or on something like ebay.
But some of those coaches did set up teams, train players, join a national competition, and in many cases are still plugging away. It's incredibly hard work. There might only be one or two teams in a given city. In some of the bigger cities there are a few more teams. But there are basically no cricket pitches - we usually play on astroturf football pitches, with the boundary extending onto a running track, if we're lucky.
There has been a national cricket championship for about five years, with national finals taking place each summer during the school holidays. The tournament is divided into university, "high school", middle school and junior school boys' and girls' sections.
In the last couple of years, basically any school or university that can get a team together and get the funding to transport the team across the country (sometimes 1,000 miles to the tournament) has been allowed to take part. Obviously, the cost and distance puts some teams off, but without a tournament to aim for, most schools and universities see little point in playing at all. The hope is for competitive local leagues and tournaments, but at the moment, with perhaps the exception of Shanghai and Shenyang, there's little chance of this happening. It would be great if we could get expats and Chinese players playing together regularly, but this proves to be surprisingly difficult.
Two sports coaches who completed the ACC training course and set up cricket on their return, were a pair of volleyball coaches from Shenyang Sports University. They have taken to cricket and done a very fine job. They train year-round and have produced the men's and women's national championship winning sides for each of the past five years. The majority of the players who have represented China at senior level have come from that university.
The national coach is Rashid Khan, the former Pakistan international. He's been in China, courtesy of the Pakistan Cricket Board, I believe, for at least four years and has trained teams across several age groups. There has also been support from the ACC, with former Test players Aminul Islam and, more recently, Monjurul Islam, both from Bangladesh, providing support, training and encouragement, to players and coaches.
The Chinese men's and women's teams played in the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, where China's first and only cricket stadium was built.
There are a handful of private international schools (and Shanghai Cricket Club) with basic cricket pitches - an artificial strip in the middle of a grass field, but Guangzhou is the only grass wicket in the country, and it has been secured for use by Chinese cricket for the next few years.
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