The UAE’s leading cricketers started their tour of Dallas for their latest Cricket World Cup League Two tri-series conflicted by feelings of a potential loss of earnings.
Now they face the prospect of having to play for survival as one-day international cricketers altogether after a dismal sequence of performances.
The national team suffered a third loss in a row on Sunday as they were soundly beaten by the United States by five wickets.
They lost with over 11 overs to spare. So consigned to their fate were they, they did not even bother bringing up the field to prevent the single that was needed to win the game.
It leaves them last placed in CWCL2, and in a fight to retain their status in ODI cricket.
It is a sorry state for a side who have underachieved for years, and now face the threat of relegation to the third tier of 50-over international cricket.
Even with one more tri-series still to play, involving the Netherlands and Oman in the UAE later this month, they are now guaranteed to be playing in the World Cup Qualifier Play-off in December.
They had started the trip to Dallas with fanciful ambitions of playing their way into the top four of CWCL2.
That would have avoided the need to participate in the play-off, and advancing straight to the global qualifier in February.
More pressingly, it would have made the players available for the ILT20 in December. Six of the 15-player squad had earned contracts to play in that competition, on deals ranging from $10,000 to $95,000.
To avoid the scheduling clash, they would have had to have won all eight of their remaining matches, and hoped results elsewhere went their way. Instead, they saw one match washed out, and lost the other three.
Finishing in the top six of CWCL2 now looks beyond the UAE, too. To do that, they would have to win all four matches against the Netherlands and Oman, and hope sixth-placed Nepal lost all their remaining three matches.
So now ODI status – and the vast tranche of ICC funding that it unlocks – is in jeopardy.
The rules governing ODI status are complex, and have yet to be publicly confirmed by the ICC.
The play-off is an eight-team tournament involving the bottom four sides from CWCL2, plus two sides each from the two feeder Challenger Leagues that make up the third tier of ODI cricket’s competition structure.
It is likely the UAE will likely have to finish above both sides who won those feeder leagues for them to retain their ODI privileges.
Italy – who have former UAE coach Dougie Brown on their coaching staff - finished top of Challenge League B, and came up to the play-off with Uganda.
Challenge League A will conclude in Kenya this month. Jersey are top of the table, with Kuwait in second.
If the UAE are to continue in ODI cricket via the play-off, they will have to find a remedy to their chronic batting failings.
After making 330 in their first match in Dallas, they crumbled to 134 against Namibia, then 213 in the last game against the United States.
“It was tough luck for us on this tour,” Harpreet Bhatia, the UAE captain, said after defeat on Sunday.
“I hope the boys will learn from this series. We were always short of runs in the last couple of games. We will work things out and see what we can do from here.
“The way we played the first game, it was close. We scored 330, then after that there was a problem with scoring runs in the last two games.
“We were always short. I feel we were 40 or 50 runs short today and if we could have got 280 I think it could have been a good game for us.”
