China, the world's most populous country, might be described as cricket's greatest untapped resource. And now Cleethorpes Cricket Club are doing something about it.

Perched on the estuary of the Humber, in northern Lincolnshire, Cleethorpes CC could already claim, with some justification, to know a thing or two about east Asia.

Now they know a little more, for they have engaged the services of the first cricketer from mainland China to play in an overseas league. That player is Jiang Shuyao, 24, whose vivid, blood-red batting gloves, the ones he wears when representing China, focus the minds of potentially dismissive opponents.

"Shu", as he is popularly known throughout the club, has scored 196 runs for Cleethorpes' second team, in the Lincolnshire League, for an average of 24.5 and with a top score of 50, in the middle order. For the academy side, opening or going in first wicket down, he has scored 362 at 51.7, with five fifties and a top score of 98.

"When I wait to bat I want team-mates to get out so I can go in," he says, with a mischievous grin and what sounds dangerously like KP-ish solipsism.

Meeting him in the pavilion, however, is to realise that he is immensely well-liked in the dressing room. As he watched an under-13 game between Cleethorpes and Doncaster, calls of "Hello Shu" or "Hi Jonty" – a reference to Jonty Rhodes, the great South Africa fielder, for Jiang is prodigious in the area of point – came at regular intervals. Someone bought him a drink. Another player, who lives locally, has given him a room, lent him his bicycle and taken him shopping.

The young man from Shenyang, in the north-east of China, is getting to know Lincolnshire, that sprawl of a county that borders Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire to the west while somehow appearing to rub shoulders with the North Sea. When he arrived, in May, he spoke hardly any English, making him impervious to sledging, though early mastery of the words "yes" and "no" prevented the mayhem in running between the wickets which has been the downfall of so many.

He bowls very little, though he has tried leg-spin, and is frequently and understandably asked whether he is a purveyor of "the chinaman", the delivery bowled by a slow left-arm wrist-spinner. "He doesn't bowl it," says his friend Matt Smith, "but while in China I saw a man who did, and it made me fall about with laughter."

Smith, 41, who played for Cleethorpes for 10 years and now lives in Shenyang, where he is an English teacher at the local Aerospace University, is the man responsible for introducing Jiang to club cricket in England. "Two years ago I saw him play a really good knock and I thought he was one of the very few players in the country who really was a cricketer. He just had that little bit of understanding of when to play and when to leave it, and how to build an innings.

"The remarkable thing is that he's been playing for only four years. He had a trial for Shenyang Sports University, to get credit for his PE degree, and within a month the national coach was asking him to play for China in an international tournament in Thailand.

"I set up a cricket team at my university, and because we played regular matches against Shu's university I watched his development. When I came back to Cleethorpes one day I said I was involved with cricket in China and they said: 'Yeah, right, when are you going to send some Chinese kids over here?' We had a joke about it. Now I've done it. Last year I was convinced that he was ready to come."

Smith paid Jiang's travel costs – though he has been promised a refund by the Asian Cricket Council (ACC), of which China is a member. The player's parents have covered his costs since he arrived at the start of the season, though he eats at the club three or four times a week.

"He's on a special visa which entitles him to stay for six months," says Smith. "He is allowed to take part in a sporting event and the league season for the Lincolnshire League is deemed a sporting event. We weren't sure we'd get the visa. He is good enough for Cleethorpes' first team."

At the moment, though, Jiang cannot appear for the first team, who play in the Yorkshire League, because their overseas player must have played first-class cricket.

The world's governing body, the ICC, to which China – coached by the former Pakistan Test player Rashid Khan – is affiliated through the ACC, has taken a great deal of interest in the game in that country, even though most of the clubs there are made up of British expats. Because of its population of almost 1.4bn and its huge marketing potential, China is at the forefront of the ICC's global development programme. It has sent a working party out there and the MCC sent a team under the captaincy of Mike Gatting.

"They are struggling to create the right environment," says Smith. "We grow up with the game here. And there are so many other sports there. But progress is being made and one of Shu's team-mates will be going to Sydney this winter to play for Western Suburbs."

Wind and rain drove the Cleethorpes and Doncaster youngsters from the field. But Jiang was still smiling, happy to be involved in cricket in this environment. "When I started, I thought you bowl from just one end, because that's how it is in China, with a mat on top of concrete. There is only one proper cricket ground in China."

He does not see himself becoming a professional cricketer. "I'm too old. But after just four years I cannot do without cricket in my life. I hope I can coach, or umpire."

Meanwhile, he is happier with the more gentle training schedule at Cleethorpes CC, where Darren Pattinson – memorably once an England cricketer – played. "I like training for one or two hours here. In China we train for four hours, have some rice and then train for another four. And here you can say 'hello' to another player in training. If you do that in China you must run 10 laps of the pitch."

Cricketers are at last emerging from China; the cricket culture will take a little longer to establish itself.