Anyone looking purely at results would not see the strides taken by the UAE team at the Cricket World Cup. The failure to win any of their six games belies their many achievements, such as batsman Shaiman Anwar briefly becoming the tournament’s leading run-scorer.
Equally important was our team being exposed to the rigours of top-level cricket. Without too many previous encounters against the best sides, it’s no surprise the UAE appeared to tire as the competition chugged on. With talk about narrowing the format of the next World Cup to exclude associate member sides such as the UAE and Afghanistan, we might not get this chance again.
But that prompts the question of whether there ought to be a tournament in our own region. With Pakistan effectively a home team in the UAE, an intercontinental cup involving Pakistan and neighbouring cricketing nations in the subcontinent would give us the chance to build on the progress made this year.
