United Arab Emirates national cricket team, one of the six associate members trying their luck in the first round of the ICC World Twenty20 this year, played their first ICC World Cup in 1996 three years before Bangladesh appeared in their first World Cup in 1999.
But Bangladesh, being blessed with the Test status in 2000, drew a vast difference between the two cricket playing nations. A reason that was found common while in conversation with the three members the side – captain Khurram Khan, middle-order batsman Vikrant Shetty and coach Aaqib Javed in the ICC World Twenty20 open media session held yesterday - was cricket is yet to be taken professionally.
For 30-year-old Vikrant Shetty, cricket is a passion that he picked up as a youngster in India and carried on with it while being brought up in UAE.
“I have a full time job. I am a media planner in advertising industry. So I have a full time job where I work during the day and in the evening we manage the time to play cricket. We are actually amateur cricketers so in terms of time, it is very difficult for us to manage. So on that basis and concerning the other teams who have professional cricketers, it is a big achievement for us to qualify and play in the world event,” informed Vikrant.
Interestingly Vikrant informed that he is spending his annual leave for attending the World event. “In a year I get one month leave and I am managing that to play cricket. But the office considering World Twenty20 has been very lenient this time. They have given me leave beyond the annual leave but other than that I have to use the 30 days leave annually to play cricket,” said Vikrant.
According to captain Khurram, one cannot seriously take cricket as a career in UAE at the moment and almost everyone in his team have different full time jobs and play cricket in thier spare time in the evening – after office hours. Khurram is a fulltime employee for the Emirates Airlines.
“Qualifying for the World Cup is a huge achievement for a team which is not professional. But the time is changing and there are lots of young ones coming into the game who can look at cricket as a career,” said Khurram.
Pakistan, since the terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka team in Lahore, have been using grounds across UAE as their home. Khurram believes the presence of an international team in the country for most of a year is having its positive effects. “It does help us a lot for Pakistan being there. Almost every tournament they play in UAE encourages youngsters to play cricket there. The side (UAE) has got the ODI status and hope in future can play with Test playing teams like Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh,” said Khurram.
Cricket is indeed gaining some pace in the middle-eastern country according the side’s head coach Aaqib Javed. The former Pakistan national cricketer was criticized for being too ambitious when taking charge of the team two years ago. “It was not easy when I joined two years back. Playing in the international level, coaching players at that level and then come to work for team like UAE, is quite a difficult job. I looked into the few opportunities that I saw in the UAE cricket when I joined but media said I was too ambitious. I agreed to the fact then and see what happens. And today we are playing all the three worlds cup (U19, Twenty20 and 50 overs) which for a fact, was my ambition,” said Aaqib.
Aaqib informed that there is at least around 100 teams playing cricket around UAE and across three tiers – Div 1, Div 2 and Div 3.
“Things are going well there after qualifying for all the world cups and getting the ODI status. We hope to move forward but the next step - performance in the world events - is really tough. We qualified for the world cup but now we will need to show our potential against the best teams from around the world,” said Aaqib.