When CP Rizwan reached a century for the first time in his international cricket career on Friday afternoon, his respective cheer squads in Sharjah and Kerala responded in contrasting fashion.
In Tellicherry, it meant his mother, Nazreen Rauf, was able to breathe again, after she had been asphyxiated with nerves as he battled through the 90s.
Meanwhile, in Sharjah, his wife Fathima thought to herself: that’s the first job done – now go and win the match for your team.
As it turned out, he fell before the mission was fully complete. But his innings of 109, and contribution to a seminal alliance worth 184 with Mohammed Usman, had done the trick.
Usman made a century, too, and hit the winning runs as the UAE sealed a six-wicket win over Ireland in the first one-day international in Abu Dhabi.
The partnership was the highest ever in the UAE’s ODI history, and the win just their second against a Test nation in the format.
Rizwan termed it the proudest moment of his career in cricket to date, and he immediately phoned his nearest and dearest to celebrate.
“First I called my wife – she was very happy – then my mother,” Rizwan, 32, said.
“They are the main two people in my life. My mother is in Kerala. She was watching the match live on the telecast.
“She could not watch when I got into the 90s. She was asking my cousins to update her as she was very nervous.
“When I got to 100, she was very happy. She already started getting messages from all our relatives.”
It was the first competitive action for the UAE in nearly 11 months because of the pandemic.
Rizwan’s day job is as an electrical engineer for a construction company, and he had to go to his office even during lockdown.
When time permitted back then, he honed his cricket skills in the front room of his apartment in Sharjah, with his wife giving him throw-downs.
Fathima had not been a fan of cricket till she met her husband. Now she is a canny student of the game.
“She watched till I got to 50, then by God’s grace I got to 100, and she said I should have finished the match,” Rizwan said.
Dual blow
“I said, ‘We won, it’s fine!’ It was a good catch that got me out.
"I got out with around 25 needed, but we knew we had the power at the back end to finish it off, and that’s exactly what happened.”
The victory said much about UAE’s character. Paul Stirling had scored a fine hundred as Ireland posted 269 for five from their 50 overs for a side who had beaten world champions England the last time they had played.
The UAE were then struggling at 51 for three, before the Rizwan-Usman resistance.
Even before that, the national team had been hit by a dual blow. It was announced on the morning of the game that Chirag Suri and Aryan Lakra had tested positive for Covid 19.
Neither is displaying symptoms, but it meant Lakra was deprived a shot at a debut, while the team were denied the services of their vice-captain, Suri.
“We were sad about the news, and we really missed him, given the calibre which he has,” Rizwan said of the loss of opener Suri.
“But we can’t do much it. We were shocked to hear the news, but we gelled together.
"We said, whatever is gone is gone, now we need to play. That is what we did, and luckily everything went our way.”
The win was a pick-me-up for Ahmed Raza, the UAE captain, who was playing his first match since returning from his father’s funeral in Pakistan.
“I asked the boys to do it for me,” Raza said. “I lost my father recently. This is the first international game since that.
“This is for him, and I’m sure he was blessing me from the heavens.”
The sides will play the second of their four ODIs at the Zayed Cricket Stadium on Sunday, with Andy Balbirnie, the Ireland captain, confident his side can bounce back.
“We can certainly learn from that,” Balbirnie said of the opening day loss.
“We haven’t played cricket in a long time, but the games are coming thick and fast.
"We have had a better look at their batsmen, and we have to sit down and come up with some different plans.
“It is a big challenge for us to turn this around, 1-0 down with three to go. As long as we are getting better with every game, I can’t really ask for much more.”
THE BIO
Age: 33
Favourite quote: “If you’re going through hell, keep going” Winston Churchill
Favourite breed of dog: All of them. I can’t possibly pick a favourite.
Favourite place in the UAE: The Stray Dogs Centre in Umm Al Quwain. It sounds predictable, but it honestly is my favourite place to spend time. Surrounded by hundreds of dogs that love you - what could possibly be better than that?
Favourite colour: All the colours that dogs come in
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
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From Europe to the Middle East, economic success brings wealth - and lifestyle diseases
A rise in obesity figures and the need for more public spending is a familiar trend in the developing world as western lifestyles are adopted.
One in five deaths around the world is now caused by bad diet, with obesity the fastest growing global risk. A high body mass index is also the top cause of metabolic diseases relating to death and disability in Kuwait, Qatar and Oman – and second on the list in Bahrain.
In Britain, heart disease, lung cancer and Alzheimer’s remain among the leading causes of death, and people there are spending more time suffering from health problems.
The UK is expected to spend $421.4 billion on healthcare by 2040, up from $239.3 billion in 2014.
And development assistance for health is talking about the financial aid given to governments to support social, environmental development of developing countries.
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
Five famous companies founded by teens
There are numerous success stories of teen businesses that were created in college dorm rooms and other modest circumstances. Below are some of the most recognisable names in the industry:
- Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started Facebook when he was a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate.
- Dell: When Michael Dell was an undergraduate student at Texas University in 1984, he started upgrading computers for profit. He starting working full-time on his business when he was 19. Eventually, his company became the Dell Computer Corporation and then Dell Inc.
- Subway: Fred DeLuca opened the first Subway restaurant when he was 17. In 1965, Mr DeLuca needed extra money for college, so he decided to open his own business. Peter Buck, a family friend, lent him $1,000 and together, they opened Pete’s Super Submarines. A few years later, the company was rebranded and called Subway.
- Mashable: In 2005, Pete Cashmore created Mashable in Scotland when he was a teenager. The site was then a technology blog. Over the next few decades, Mr Cashmore has turned Mashable into a global media company.
- Oculus VR: Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR in June 2012, when he was 19. In August that year, Oculus launched its Kickstarter campaign and raised more than $1 million in three days. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion two years later.
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