Given the hyper-professional nature of the England set up, it’s highly unlikely they will need to issue an emergency SOS at any point during the Women’s T20 World Cup.
In the event they do suddenly find themselves a player down, though, they would not need to look far for help. Fifteen minutes down the road from the Dubai International Stadium, one of the brightest prospects in English cricket is currently at home with itchy feet.
Mahika Gaur might well have had claims on a starting place in the England XI for this tournament, had she not been ruled out of the majority of the UK summer by injury.
She made the trip out to Dubai in any case because that’s where home is. Gaur was brought up in the city, went to Dubai College, and played for the UAE national team, before heading to the UK to take up a scholarship for her A-levels.
She completed school this summer, and has deferred entry to university at Loughborough for at least a year, in order to focus on cricket. For now, that has meant a trip back home to Dubai.
Having her so close at hand is helpful for the England team. They included her in the pre-World Cup training camp in Abu Dhabi, and she has joined in with practice around the competition itself, too.
Whether that means she is strategically placed should any misfortune befall any of the side’s fast bowlers is hypothetical. What it does guarantee, though, is they can continue to monitor her return to full fitness.
When she suffered that side injury back in May, coincidentally at Loughborough in a game for her county, the World Cup could not have been further from her mind.
The initial prognosis was four to eight weeks out and, “I was thinking, ‘By the end of exams I could be perfectly fine,’” Gaur told The National.
“At first, I was upset because I was quite stressed by exams, and having cricket was something that would take my mind off things.
“That was annoying, but then I realised it could be a good thing because at least I’ve got something to do. If it had happened after my exams, I’d literally have had nothing to do.”
Her academics remained blissfully unaffected. She ended up achieving top grades in her maths, psychology and biology A-levels, and plans to study for a psychology degree at an as yet undefined point in the future.
But her cricket suffered a lengthy setback. She aimed to be back for the Hundred, the competition in which she first sprung to prominence a year earlier, by the end of July.
That did not work out. Neither was she fit to return for England’s summer programme of matches against New Zealand.
She made it back into the squad for T20 internationals in Ireland last month, but by then England’s plans for the World Cup were fully formed.
“I wasn’t really thinking about the World Cup because I knew I’d missed a lot of cricket and would completely understand if they didn’t pick me,” Gaur, 18, said.
“They hadn’t really seen a lot of me, so I just wanted to get back fully fit as soon as possible, and whatever would happen would happen.”
For the majority of the summer, England's World Cup preparations were for a tournament set to be in Bangladesh. That changed in August when the event was switched to Dubai and Sharjah in a response to the civil unrest in that country.
Gaur was tipped off about the switch ahead of time, and her hopes soared. If she could not play in a home World Cup, at least she could still be there for it.
“The head coach [Jon Lewis] called me to say I would be in the Ireland T20 series and I’d be around for the ODI stuff,” Gaur said.
“He said I was not selected for what was, at the time, Bangladesh, but that there was a chance it might be moved to the UAE. I live there and was going to come home anyway, and he said that if it is in Dubai, hopefully, we can get you along to some training sessions.
“Then I was really excited and was thinking, ‘Please, let it be in Dubai.’ It makes stuff a lot simpler, so I don’t have to find somewhere to go and bowl. At least now I can be at home and my training is all taken care of.”
Gaur’s sanguine take on her troubles this summer is commendable. Given how she started out in the international game last year, she might have been forgiven for getting ahead of herself.
In October 2022 she was carrying the drinks in a series for the UAE against Hong Kong in Ajman. Less than a year later she was playing in front of the Sky Sports cameras in a T20 international for England - and thriving, too.
“I really was not expecting that phone call,” Gaur said of her elevation to the England side in August 2023.
“I saw [coach Lewis’s] message asking to ring him back. I had missed his call because I had been asleep.
“We were at the hotel for the Hundred, and breakfast was going to close in half an hour. I went and got some breakfast, and I was really chilled about it because I thought he just wanted to talk about some A-side stuff we had coming up.
“But then he rang to say I would be in the series, and I wasn’t expecting it. It felt really weird. I had hoped to play for England, but I didn’t think it would come that soon.”
She received her England cap from Kate Cross, who had helped Gaur settle in the county game in the UK, after she was talented spotted at a pop-up coaching clinic at Expo 2022 in Dubai.
“She really helped me that series, too, getting used to international cricket,” Gaur said of Cross’s help in her debut series against Sri Lanka.
“She would be standing at mid-on or mid-off and would be calming me down. It was just like we were playing for [county side] Thunder. I was very grateful.”
When she then went on to make her one-day international debut shortly after, it was Katherine Sciver-Brunt who presented her cap.
In her speech, Sciver-Brunt, the World Cup-winning former England fast bowler, joked that she was grateful Gaur had waited until she had retired before she “crept out of the woodwork”.
“It meant everything at the time,” Gaur said. “I didn’t know who was going to present me my cap. Everyone was stood in the circle and Lauren Filer and Maia Bouchier were making their debuts as well.
“They got their caps presented before me, and the whole time I was looking around thinking, ‘Who’s giving me mine?’
“She just appeared out of nowhere and I thought, ‘Oh, wow.’ She was my favourite cricketer growing up.
“When I had made my debut for the UAE, they had asked us who our favourite cricketers were to introduce ourselves, and I said Katherine Brunt. It was a mad moment.”
Gaur caused quite the impression in her debut series, not least as she managed to dismiss the great Sri Lankan batter Chamari Athapaththu. Not that that was anything new: she had done the same thing before while still a UAE player.
“When I bowled against her for England, I was just thinking that I had played against them in the Asia Cup for UAE, and that I have done this before,” she said.
“Just because I am doing this in an England shirt, doesn’t make it any different. I have done the same thing for UAE. That is the way I was looking at it. That helped me relax.”
