DUBAI - THE UNLIKELY CRICKETING HUB

The remarkable story of how the UAE became the centre of the cricketing universe

Amidst the political chaos of this Champions Trophy, we do now know one thing – the final on Sunday will be played in Dubai. That was decided last night when India won their semi-final against Australia. So poor old Pakistan, handicapped by the whims of Indian politicians, have still been unable to properly emerge from their decade of cricketing darkness post the terrorist attacks of 2008 and 2009. They have only played one match at home in this tournament (a second was washed out and a third was against India in Dubai) and are now denied hosting the final also.

It will be the first time the Dubai International stadium has staged the final of a major ICC 50-over competition, ironically on the 20^th anniversary of the ICC decamping from their long-standing home on the Nursery ground at Lord’s. It crowns the UAE’s emergence as a global cricketing hub. Apart from the ICC headquarters, it has three international cricket grounds, numerous cricket academies, and a number of current and former international players have moved there – most recently James Vince and Alex Hales. After the Champions Trophy final, five county teams – Somerset, Notts, Warwickshire, Essex and Yorkshire - and the South Asian Cricket Academy will be in residence nearby, competing for the Abu Dhabi Counties Supercup from March 14-16.

So how did the UAE – a desert tax haven of oil sheiks and Russian oligarchs where the temperature often touches 45 degrees - become an international cricketing hub? Some years ago I received a fascinating letter from a retired British airman, John Butcher, which explains all. In 1943 Butcher was stationed at the Sharjah air base, adjoining Dubai.

“I was the watchkeeper one morning in the transmitting station, deeply immersed in the newly-arrived 1943 Wisden. I was therefore disconcerted by the roar from the M.O. doing his rounds and suggesting that I was not exerting myself. I leapt to attention waiting the storm. Instead he said, in soft Irish, ‘What’s the book?’ ‘Wisden sir,’ I said. He begged me to lend it to him when I’d finished and we talked cricket for half an hour.

“He visited later, borrowed the book and when he returned it, told me to get a team up from Signals. On the airfield, a gunpost stood in the centre of the only patch of hard sand. Twenty men removed the gunpost. Arab labourers painted 1000 petrol tins white to form the boundary, palm fronds were woven into sightscreens, a native carpenter produced a scoreboard. Someone told the labourers it was rain-making equipment and they worked with a will.

“Equipment appeared from the weekly Dakota – a beautiful short-handled Gunn & Moore, a massive teak creation from India and four Israeli bats which lasted only six overs before the delicate relationship between the handle and the blade dissolved. Then came the mat. Balls would not last on sand and we only had six. The M.O. remembered seeing a 22 yard mat in the officer’s mess in Bahrain. Early in the morning one of our rusty Vincents took off, and later the mat appeared. No questions were asked or answered.

“Unseasonal rain apparently delayed the first match for a fortnight, but before long a league had begun amongst ten teams drawn from 200 men, part British servicemen, part locals. There was not a lot of war action in Sharjah, so the assembled crew needed something to pass the time. The BOAC Indians won the first league. Seven elegant Hindus, coached to perfection in good schools, provided the runs and the keeper.. Bowling was the job of the labouring class Muslims. They played in full robes. Little black hands peeped out from yards of muslin and the ball spun towards you.”

The first major match at Sharjah in 1981 - Gavaskar’s XI v Miandad’s XI

From such little acorns, the sprawling oak of UAE cricket grew, to the extent that it now encompasses a multitude of club and school competitions. It staged its first international event in 1981 - Sunil Gavaskar’s XI versus Javed Miandad’s XI (above) in front of over 8,000 fans at the new Sharjah Cricket Stadium, built on the site of that first improvised pitch. It has since hosted more international matches (294) than any other cricket ground, though the Dubai stadium, 30 miles up the road and built in 2008, is now a more prestigious venue.

So, incongruously Dubai has become the hub of world cricket operations (though the Indians might dispute that). There is a room full of TV monitors at ICC headquarters simultaneously showing every major cricket match in progress around the world, checking on players and umpires. It’s like a scene from the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, in which Jonathan Pryce plays a sinister media mogul monitoring the world via a video wall. It’s very Big Brother. And all because a young airman was caught reading Wisden. How the UAE might be different if he’d been caught reading Beach Volleyball Monthly.

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