While the attention of much of the UAE sporting public is on the national football team’s bid for a place at the 2026 World Cup in Doha, on the other side of the region the cricketers are aiming to do the same.
Cosmin Olaroiu’s footballers face matches against Oman and Qatar in Doha on Saturday and Tuesday. If they top that three team group, they will qualify for next year’s World Cup in North America.
Cricket’s T20 World Cup will also be played next year, in India and Sri Lanka, and the UAE hope to be part of it.
The Lalchand Rajput-coached team are playing in a qualifying tournament on familiar territory at the Oman Cricket Academy in Al Amerat, on the outskirts of Muscat.
The T20 World Cup Asia and East Asia Pacific Qualifier carries three places for the World Cup, which is due to take place in February and March next year.
The Qualifier is slightly different to previous ones. In the recent past, the UAE had to contend with the best in Asia to reach the World Cup.
This time, they are joined by sides from the East Asia Pacific region of cricket.
Format
Nine teams are competing in the Qualifier, and are divided into three pools of three.
The top two sides from each group advance to the second round, the Super Six phase.
The top three teams at the end of that six-team, round-robin league will qualify for the World Cup.
Pools
Group 1: UAE, Malaysia, Qatar.
Group 2: Japan, Kuwait, Nepal.
Group 3: Oman, Papua New Guinea, Samoa
UAE squad
Muhammad Waseem (captain), Alishan Sharafu, Aryansh Sharma, Basil Hameed, Dhruv Parashar, Jonathan Figy, Haider Ali, Harshit Kaushik, Junaid Siddique, Mohammed Farooq, Mohammed Irfan, Rahul Chopra, Rohid Khan, Simranjeet Singh, Zahid Ali
Star players
Muhammad Waseem. The opener has great memories of playing in Muscat. He scored a hundred there in the Qualifier final as UAE reached the 2022 World Cup, and did the same ahead of this year’s Asia Cup.
Junaid Siddique. The fast bowler has had a brilliant few weeks. He was among the leading wicket-takers at the Asia Cup, then a few days later attracted a bid of $170,000 at the first ILT20 auction.
Mohammad Rohid. The left-arm seamer is relatively new to the national team set-up, having debuted in the summer. His capabilities were already well known, though, as shown by his $140,000 deal to play in Season 4 of the ILT20.
Fixtures
Wednesday, October 8: UAE v Qatar (2.30pm)
Friday, October 10: UAE v Malaysia (10am)
The Super Six phase will be played from October 12-17
The opposition
The UAE are the highest ranked side in the competition, and should start the tournament as one of the favourites to qualify, but there are some potential threats.
They have been used to vying with Nepal for places at major events in both men’s, women’s and age-group cricket. Some times with happy consequences, but some times with miserable ones.
Nepal are in stunning form. They flew to Muscat on the back of an extraordinary series win against the West Indies in their first series against a Test-playing nation, in Sharjah.
Oman are a new-look side and have struggled of late, but are no strangers to major events. Plus they have home advantage.
Papua New Guinea qualified for the last T20 World Cup, in the United States and the Caribbean.
Samoa are a largely unknown quantity, other than the very familiar figure of Ross Taylor. The former New Zealand captain reversed his retirement from the sport to represent the country of his heritage in the Qualifier.
No Shame
Lily Allen
(Parlophone)
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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(Tagalog with Eng/Ar subtitles)
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Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Nick Frost, Lena Headey, Florence Pugh, Thomas Whilley, Tori Ellen Ross, Jack Lowden, Olivia Bernstone, Elroy Powell
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7pm: Wathba Stallions Cup (PA) Handicap Dh 70,000 2,200m | Winner: AF Kafu, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel
7.30pm: Handicap (PA) Dh 100,000 2,400m | Winner: Brass Ring, Fabrice Veron, Ismail Mohammed
Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
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Meydan card
6.30pm: Al Maktoum Challenge Round-1 (PA) Group 1 US$65,000 (Dirt) 1,600m
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9.25pm: Handicap (TB) $175,000 (D) 1,900m
10pm: Handicap (TB) $135,000 (T) 1,600m
HIV on the rise in the region
A 2019 United Nations special analysis on Aids reveals 37 per cent of new HIV infections in the Mena region are from people injecting drugs.
New HIV infections have also risen by 29 per cent in western Europe and Asia, and by 7 per cent in Latin America, but declined elsewhere.
Egypt has shown the highest increase in recorded cases of HIV since 2010, up by 196 per cent.
Access to HIV testing, treatment and care in the region is well below the global average.
Few statistics have been published on the number of cases in the UAE, although a UNAIDS report said 1.5 per cent of the prison population has the virus.
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Evacuations to France hit by controversy
- Over 500 Gazans have been evacuated to France since November 2023
- Evacuations were paused after a student already in France posted anti-Semitic content and was subsequently expelled to Qatar
- The Foreign Ministry launched a review to determine how authorities failed to detect the posts before her entry
- Artists and researchers fall under a programme called Pause that began in 2017
- It has benefited more than 700 people from 44 countries, including Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Sudan
- Since the start of the Gaza war, it has also included 45 Gazan beneficiaries
- Unlike students, they are allowed to bring their families to France
