In the euphoria of Nepals widely broadcasted wins against Hong Kong and Afghanistan in the 2014 World T20 in Bangladesh, cricket captured the nations imagination. Here was a sport that the country could compete in at the elite level, a team that could do the proud nation some good. Not long after, Nepal was granted T20 international status, raising hopes of seeing them play more regularly on the international stage.Suddenly everyone was a cricket fan. Games of cricket started popping up in backyards and open spaces. The sport became a regular topic of conversation in teashops and bars. The popularity of cricket fuelled hope that a proper domestic league would finally be set up. Looking into the future, cricket fans saw Nepal playing ODIs, and eventually Test cricket, on a regular basis.A few months after Nepals remarkable performance in Bangladesh, and under pressure from the ICC to professionalise its management, the Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) hired 31-year-old Bhawana Ghimire as its first CEO. When news of her appointment filtered out, it was greeted with both fanfare and scepticism. Was she the best choice? Was she a political pawn? People were excited to see a new face, a young face, at a time when the CAN board was overseen by the 83-year-old Tarini Bikram Shah. To top it off, a woman had been appointed to professionalise a sporting institution that had, for all of Shahs eight decades, been rooted in patriarchy and aristocracy. Was it even possible?Despite CANs entrenched problems and notoriously storied politics, Ghimire had no hesitation in taking on the job. I anticipated challenges, she said to me in February. But cricket has so much potential in Nepal and I felt that I could contribute to make it the biggest sport in Nepal.Ghimire instantly became a celebrity. Her mandate included maintaining communications with the Asian Cricket Council (ACC), ICC, and Nepals governing bodies; running the CAN office; and reaching out to sponsors and other stakeholders for the promotion of cricket. Leveraging her new-found fame, Ghimire consistently pushed her agenda of professionalising cricket. She worked closely with Pubudu Dassanayake, the former Sri Lanka wicketkeeper-turned-Nepal coach, to draft a 70-page five-year plan.Six months into the job she presented the plan to the board. It was never approved. I dont know if anyone even read it, she says with sadness.Taking on responsibility has been a cornerstone of Ghimires upbringing. The oldest of three siblings, she raised her brother and sister in Kathmandu after they moved from their parental village in Arghakhanchi. She was in sixth grade at the time.It was the first time I had seen or ridden a bus. It was all new to me, she says, before going silent and reflective. I guess I left my childhood in the village. My mother stayed back in the village and when my father was at work, I had to be the responsible one. My father enrolled me in Padma Kanya Higher Secondary School, and I remember, on the third day I went to school all by myself. It sounds trivial now, but that day, after I got home, I felt like I had become an independent woman.Ghimire isnt an imposing figure but she carries herself with measured confidence. She is smartly dressed in a suit, and her eyes hold a steady resolve, a trait she has relied on when dealing with the mighty men of CAN. Unlike most Nepali girls, who are raised to be obedient wives, Ghimire grew up in a household that encouraged her to be freethinking and independent. Its always been like that with my family, she shrugs. I was given the freedom to choose what I studied and what I did. I never had to think about things in a gendered sense until I got this job.Growing up in Kathmandu, Ghimire dreamt of working in a bank. For many young Nepalis growing up in the 1990s, banks were an oasis of professionalism in an economy that was mostly informal. Pursuing her dream, she got a Bachelors in business administration in Kathmandu and then an MBA in banking and finance from the University of Wales in Bangor. After working in a bank in Nepal for a few months, she moved to Bahrain to join an asset management company.By then traditional banking had lost its charm on me and I wanted to do something new, she explains. For the next three and a half years, she had the opportunity to work on a number of sports events and the acquisition of some sporting companies. I did a lot of research on sports clubs. I studied football clubs and some IPL clubs and came to know how sports clubs operated.At a time when many Nepalis were actively seeking to leave the country in search of greener pastures, Ghimire chose to return to Kathmandu in 2010. Well, I always knew I would come back and I always intended on coming back, she says laughing. I had a dream of coming back to Nepal and establishing my own company.Four years on, she got the call from CAN.When I first met Ghimire, in February, Nepal were playing in the Under-19 World Cup in Bangladesh while the two CAN boards, both contesting legitimacy, were mired in a court battle. As we talked, we saw the Nepal top order crumble against Pakistan. We were sitting in a corporate-looking office and the game was being shown on a large flat-screen TV in the lobby. This is my husbands office, she revealed in the lull between overs. We cant work out of the CAN office since there is nothing there - no computers, no Wi-Fi.Nepal tumbled to 29 for 4 in the tenth over, chasing 259. Our boys are inexperienced, Ghimire stated, more to console herself. Theyve hardly gotten any training or serious coaching.I suggested that the U-19 team must be extremely talented to have beaten New Zealand and Ireland on their way to the quarter-finals. Raw talent, but from here on if they dont get the kind of support and training that the New Zealand and Ireland players will get, they wont be able to keep up. She felt responsible for making sure that they kept up.The team also had to put up with a dysfunctional CAN. This whole tour is running on credit, she said, exasperated. The players and coaches are having to spend their own money to represent their country.The energy and love for the game among players and fans has encouraged the ACC and ICC to continue to support Nepal. On a number of occasions, international boards have gone to great lengths to overlook CANs politics and ensure Nepals teams could participate in tournaments. Yet Nepal crickets current predicament is not unexpected. The last sport to capture the national psyche was football in the late 1980s and 1990s. Most of its aspirations died within a political quagmire. When the president of the All Nepal Football Association (ANFA) was suspended over charges of corruption in last years FIFA scandal, no one raised an eyebrow.To understand the latest twist in the CAN story one must go back to December last year, when the National Sports Council (NSC), citing procedural inconsistencies, refused to recognise the newly elected CAN board. The NSC appointed its own 15-member board under a different leadership - which led to a court case that is currently held up in the Supreme Court. With the fate of CAN stuck in the courts for months, the ICC board stepped in on April 26 and suspended CANs membership, until CAN becomes free of government interference and is properly structured to begin exploiting the tremendous cricket talent and opportunities that exist in Nepal. However, the ICC board stated that it would allow the national team to continue featuring in ICC events, and retained Ghimire to oversee cricket operations.Ghimire helped the ICC coordinate Nepals visit to the Netherlands for two games in August this year, as part of its World Cricket League (WCL) Championship. Nepal lost the first match by seven wickets but bounced back to win the second by 19 runs. In preparation for these matches, the ICC helped organise a tour of England in July, where Nepal beat the Marylebone Cricket Club in front of over 5000 adoring fans at Lords.In her quest to professionalise CAN, Ghimire has required incredible patience. Four to six presidents - depending on whom you consider legitimate - passed through CAN during her tenure. She worked under a board beset by court cases, infighting, and periodic bank freezes, combined with increased media scrutiny. While there have been marked improvements in the last year and a half, the instability of the board has meant progress has been tentative. When annual contracts for the players were announced in January last year, it was greeted with unanimous approval as a move towards professionalising the sport. With CAN operationally defunct, these contracts are yet to be renewed.The two Nepal-Namibia games in April, part of the WCL Championship, were shrouded in uncertainty for many months. The ICC confirmed the venue a month before the games, only after deciding to take over all administrative responsibilities. Nepal won both matches and record numbers turned out to watch, but the spectre of a deadweight cricket board hung over the games.About a month before the matches were to be played, I sat on a concrete pipe that serves as a bench in Kathmandu Cricket Training Center (KCTC) and waited for Gyanendra Malla, Nepals vice-captain. KCTC occupies a small space two kilometres north of Nepals premier cricket stadium - the Tribhuvan University (TU) Cricket Ground. Five teenage boys were singing old Hindi film love songs, chatting and laughing as they took turns bowling and batting in the nets.Malla was easy-going and personable. His words came easy and precise. Watching him on TV doesnt give you the sense of how imposingly built he is and how his persona can fill the room. I asked him how the turmoil in CAN was affecting the team. It affects Nepali cricket for sure, makes everything difficult, but it doesnt really affect our morale, he explained. When we started, playing for our country was enough. That reason for playing has not changed.When I brought up the issue of contracts, he shrugged. They havent renewed it, but its not like we were not playing when we didnt have contracts. So what was the biggest fallout from the CAN drama, I asked. We dont have a permanent coach and we dont have a cricket calendar, Malla said. We cant plan anything in advance. Our competitors have their cricket calendar set for the next two, three, five years. We dont know what we will be doing in two months. It makes it incredibly hard for us to prepare for our upcoming matches.The national teams recent on-field success has meant access to larger pots of international funds, larger allocations within the national budget, and larger sponsorship deals. This has also meant that power brokers and politicians have come circling, like scavengers around carrion. Like with every other sport and industry in the country, the dreams of Nepali cricket have long been held hostage by the power of a few.I asked Malla what he thought about the way the sport was governed. What we really need is a change in mentality, he said. We need people to come into cricket thinking of what they can give to the sport, not what they can take from it.The players arent alone in bearing the brunt of the administrative mess. Later that day I met Madhu Tamang, the head groundsman of the TU Cricket Ground, and found that he hadnt been paid for four months. This was in March, when the country was reeling from an acute shortage of fuel and cooking gas, and facing political turmoil. In the Madhes, the flat lowlands in the south, protesters unhappy with the countrys new constitution had blocked all roads to Kathmandu. The government ignored their demands and blamed India for the fuel crisis. This sparked a strong wave of unitary nationalism, which the government exploited to violently suppress the protesters. Over 50 people lost their lives.Tamang was confident that his 13-member team would eventually get paid. He had witnessed a number of upheavals in CAN and not getting paid during such transitions had become routine. I asked how he managed to maintain the ground when CAN was defunct and the nation was reeling under a fuel crisis. I was getting some fuel from the office, he said, but recently Ive been buying it off the black market. For someone who had not drawn a salary for four months, to go out and purchase 15 litres of petrol - at an exorbitant rate of about US$5 a litre - to water a pitch is as heroic as it is foolhardy. It is also very Nepali.When I asked Ghimire what would allow the players, groundsmen and their support teams to be able to do their jobs without being held hostage by the politics of the board, she had a clear road map in mind. We need to reform the way cricket is managed in Nepal. We need a board that defines guidelines for management, sets financial controls, and then allows management to run day-to-day operations. We have a three-year agreement with Nepal Telecom for a yearly NPR 15.5 million (or about $155,000) sponsorship deal to support a T20 league and a domestic league [the biggest deal in Nepal sports], but without a governing body, we havent been able to act!Ghimire also sold exclusive television rights for international cricket matches to Nepal TV for NPR 1.8 million per year (about $18,000) but the lack of cricket has been a major turn-off for potential sponsors. Its very easy for sponsors to shift from cricket to football in Nepal, Ghimire said. If we cant deliver games, they will start shifting. The turmoil in CAN has meant that Nepal cricket has been unable to secure grants of upwards of a million dollars from the ICC. And even that, according to Ghimire, would not be sufficient. We need to raise at least another million dollars in sponsorship on top of the ICC funding, she said. Thats how much we would need to really develop our domestic league and improve the standard of Nepali cricket.Does she think that is possible? Absolutely! We have a great team and raw talent. We can host a domestic league, T20 tournaments, one-day tournaments, U-21, U-19, womens and college tournaments. This is not even considering the scope of international matches and tournaments in Nepal. Each of these have to be developed. Each can have their own sponsors. But we need to build a system that can manage and run it.Early in July, with CANs court case set to continue, Ghimire officially tendered her resignation to the NSC. She said that she would continue to work under the ICC to oversee operations for Nepals national teams. In an interview to onlinekhabar.com, she spoke about her inability to fulfil her role as CEO. With two CAN boards, some say I am the CEO, others deny it. This means that even as CEO, I cant do anything. I can neither pay the players nor the employees. I can neither secure sponsorship nor run domestic tournaments.Nepal is fortunate that the ICC and ACC retain great hope for cricket in the country. There is a crop of players, coaching and support staff who are willing to give their sweat and time for pride and honour alone. But fortune and volunteer efforts wont stand the test of time. If cricket is to be a consistent feature of the countrys sports leagues and if they are to field a team that challenges for international honours, the people who claim to own the keys to Nepal crickets governing body must match the spirit of the players who have done this nation proud. Cameron Jordan Jersey . Parker had 26 points and eight assists and San Antonio beat Toronto 112-99 Monday night. "We won that game because of Tony Parkers aggressiveness," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "His juice; his aggression all night long. Sheldon Rankins Jersey . 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We already know the superstars going to San Francisco in two weeks time to compete at the 2016 World Championships: Lee Faker Sang-hyeok, Song Smeb Kyung-ho and S?ren Bjergsen Bjerg. But which top talents arent going to Worlds? Lets take a look at 15 players who -- in an alternate reality -- could be making noise at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium during the group stages on Sept. 29.Top Lane:Kim Ssumday Chan-hoWe start with one of the best of those missing from the stage. Ssumday made the World Championships last year with KT Rolster before dropping in the quarterfinals to top lane rival Smeb and ROX Tigers. This year, everything appeared to be lined up for a return trip back to Worlds with KT upsetting archnemesis SK Telecom T1 to make the domestic summer finals. Following a close 3-2 loss against the Tigers, KT was upset by Samsung Galaxy (historically, KT had had a 19-game win streak against it). Ssumday had been one of the best players in Korea the entire year, yet, in the final weeks of the season, his form slipped at the worst time possible.Heo Huni Seung-hoonImmortals didnt make Worlds, losing to Cloud9 in the finals of the North American Regional Qualifier, but that was to no fault of Hunis. After getting dissected by C9s Jung Impact Eon-yeong in the domestic semifinals, he rebounded with a rejuvenated performance in the rematch by keeping up with the C9 top laner. Hunis overall year wasnt nearly as successful as his rookie campaign on Fnatic, but that falloff is still not enough to keep him off this list, since a majority of the other best top laners made it into the World Championships.Lucas Cabochard Simon-MesletUnlike our other two top laners, Cabochard wasnt close to making the World Championships. Team Vitality followed up an optimistic inaugural season by fielding a weakened lineup in the summer and barely finishing in seventh place to avoid relegations. Regardless, Cabochard is one of the best individual talents Europe has to offer in the top lane, and its another year hell miss Worlds stuck on a team that imploded in the summer split. Next year will be his third year as a professional, and the third time may just be the charm for the French top laner.JungleGo Score Dong-binScore should be at the World Championships. Hes arguably the best jungler in the world and a top five player pound-for-pound. Ssumday stumbled at the finish line; Score, on the other hand, did everything in his power to drag the KT Rolster organization to Worlds. Hes a general on the field and his years of experience has made him one of the smartest players on Summoners Rift as well. You can talk about the two-hitpoint Baron he failed to secure against ROX Tigers (that could have guaranteed KT a spot at Worlds), but thatd be a disservice to how well hes played throughout the entire year. While KT fluctuated in form across the two splits, Score was solid as could be.Kim Reignover Yeu-jinThe former MVP of the North American LCS comes next. Similar to Ssumdays situation on KT, Reignover had a dry spell to end the season, but its hard to keep him off the list of top international players not making the World Championships. As the man who kept Immortals running on track for 98 percent of the season, there are few junglers in the world currently who can confidently say theyre all-around stronger than the South Korean import. After making the semifinals of Worlds last season, not even touching ground this year will be a disappointment for Reignover.Choi Dandy In-kyuAll right, Team WEs Xiang Condi Ren-Jie should probably be here, yet, seeing Dandy makes me reminisce of the 2014 World Championships when no one in the jungle could even get close to his Rengar play. All five members of the Summoners Cup-winning Samsung White team went to China after the 2014 win, but only Dandy has yet to win a domestic title since transferring to Vici Gaming. He had a brief stint in the top lane before thankfully being switched back to his comfort position of jungle, and VG failed to make it through the Chinese Regional for a second year in a row to miss Worlds. All the other members of Samsung White, counting this year, have made it back to Worlds except for Dandy.Can we please get this man back to the World Championships next year, Vici Gaming?Mid Lane:Chu FoFo Chun-LanOut of all the rookies possibly making their debut at Worlds this year, I was most excited to see FoFo. He was the newfound ace of the rebranded J Team -- formerly Taipei Assassins -- and was going toe-to-toe with Flash Wolves Huang Maple Yi-Tang. When J Team were leading the pack in the summer season of the LMS, it seemed likee wed get to see FoFo play against the best mid laners the world has to offer.dddddddddddd Those dreams went down the drain when J Team faltered at the end of the season, completely crumbling when it was time to decide which teams from Taiwan would go to Worlds. FoFo and J Team didnt even get to the finals of the Taiwan Regional, losing to Machi 17 in a massive upset in the semifinals.Song Fly Yong-junOh look, another KT Rolster player. Its almost like this team really should be at Worlds. Fly was a liability for KT when he first debuted in the starting five at the start of 2016, and turned into a strength by the end of it. His awkward champion pool worked to KTs advantage against the likes of SK Telecom T1, and Flys individual play vastly improved from opening day. Unfortunately, like the rest of KT, hell have to watch from the sidelines as the World Championships begin, still hunting for his first trip to the grandest stage in League of Legends.Song Rookie Eui-jinRookie, mechanically, is one of the top players in the world. Hes a fantastic individual talent, and its a shame he is wasted on an Invictus Gaming squad that took the entire summer to finally find a semblance of a starting five that worked. It got so bad during the split that Rookie played at AD for a while before the team settled on a starter. On a good team, Rookie could contend for the title of best player in the world. On Invictus Gaming -- at least this iteration -- hes a piece of gold in a sea of copper.AD CarryGu Imp Seung-binIts crazy how much a year can change a view on a player. Last year before the World Championships, Imp was in the conversation alongside Cho Mata Se-hyeong for being the second-best player in the games history behind Faker. Imp, if he could win a second Summoners Cup with LGD Gaming, would have even possibly surpassed Faker in the eyes of some. None of that happened, however. LGD burned to the ground at 2015 Worlds, and Imp somewhat sleepwalked through a chaotic year on LGD where the lineup changed more than the expensive T-shirts he owns. Still, Imp, individually, is a great player like Dandy and Rookie, and Worlds will be missing his amazing play and even better trash talk.No Arrow Dong-hyeonOur fourth KT Rolster member, Arrow deserves his spot in this list of top players missing Worlds. As with Fly, Arrow improved leaps and bounds this year, and became more than merely the cleanup man of the Rolster team. His Jhin play in the final few weeks of the season was masterful, and his play on the long-ranged sniper almost got KT Rolster to the summer championship and a Pool 1 seed at Worlds.Jin Mystic Sung-junIts been a strange few years for Mystic. He started out in the Jin Air organization in Korea before moving to China with Team WE. He played alongside Lee Spirit Da-yun as the other Korean on the squad before the aforementioned jungler left in controversy. Since Spirits exit and the addition of fellow Korean support Yoon Zero Kyung-sup, Mystic has gotten more spotlight on a talented WE starting five.SupportYoon Zero Kyung-supSpeaking of Zero, here he is on the list. The former Summoners Cup finalist, its disappointing we wont see him on the worlds stage for a second straight year. Team WE were one game -- one teamfight -- from getting to the World Championships, holding a 7k gold lead over I May and breaking into their base; ultimately, they couldnt convert, getting flanked and wiped from the map.Adrian Adrian MaAdrian was the star in Immortals 3-2 win over Counter Logic Gaming in the third-place match in Toronto, Canada, a few weeks ago, but he couldnt nail down a first trip to Worlds with a loss to C9 in the NA Regional Final. Out of the five Immortals players, Adrian is the only one who still hasnt had the chance to prove himself at Worlds.Ha Hachani Seung-chanI never thought Id include Hachani in an article with top players, but here we are. The once heavily scrutinized support was a star for the team down the stretch, and he proved himself worthy as a player who could have held his own on the international stage if given the chance. All five KT Rolster players were featured in this piece. That should tell you something of the talent that is being left at home to watch.In 2012, the top team on the sidelines was Azubu Blaze. In 2013, it was the KT Bullets. In 2014, it was SK Telecom T1. This year, it was KT Rolster, a South Korean team. Had it qualified, it could have won it all depending on the circumstances and draw of the bracket. ' ' '