Rajasthan Royals are opening a new coaching academy in the UAE, with former Zimbabwe captain Graeme Cremer as head coach.
The IPL franchise will base their new venture, for six to 19-year-olds, at The Sevens, Dubai. It is only their second academy outside of India, the other being in Surrey in the UK.
Plans for the academy have been under discussion for the past six to nine months, long before the decision was taken to relocate the IPL to the UAE.
Jake Lush McCrum, Rajasthan’s chief operating officer, says he hopes the new coaching school will have a lasting impact on the game in the emirates.
“We were discussing this before the IPL was announced in the UAE, so it is a happy coincidence the IPL shifted across here,” Lush McCrum said.
“We want to further the grassroots development. We are not here for a one-off season. We want to invest in the country, invest in grassroots cricket here, grow the reach of our brand, and train people the Royals way.
“We believe we have different methodologies for developing players that are unique to our academies. We have regular audits of the academies to make sure they are following those approaches.”
The long-term plan is to have tournaments between the Royals academy sides from Dubai, the UK and India.
The Dubai centre will also be used to trial new technologies, influenced by baseball, with a view to implementing them in the training practices of the full IPL side in future.
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Bangalore v Rajasthan player ratings
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“This is a great opportunity to help grow our fan-base here 365 days per year,” Lush McCrum said. “We have been looking at the UAE for a while, but it is about finding the right partner, who has good experience and been successful here.
“It is a challenging thing coming to a country you have no experience in yourself. We wanted someone who could follow our Royals brand of cricket, and share that philosophy.”
That partnership is with a new company – Red Bear Sports – that is co-founded and run by Dougie Brown, the former UAE coach, and Will Kitchen, the former performance director of the Emirates Cricket Board.
“We are passionate about developing cricket in the UAE, and we were keen to find a partner to help us continue the work we have done in terms of player development for the past six or seven years,” Kitchen said.
“We want to bring to life the things we think are important to young people when trying to engage them in the game.
“If we can find people we think can progress to IPL, fantastic. But what we really want to do is try to make sure we can enable people to engage with coaches who are passionate about the game.”
Kitchen hopes to have 150 children enrolled in the academy by the end of the year. The initial intake will include six scholarships for girls, selected from a trial next week involving up to 22 players recommended by the ECB.
The new venture will be the first time a coaching academy has been based at The Sevens, which has three grass cricket ovals, as well as a number of sand grounds, adjacent to city’s rugby headquarters.
“We think the quality of the facilities are paramount to the experience,” Kitchen said. “There is no doubt in my mind that The Sevens is one of the best cricket facilities. We are blessed in the UAE to have four or five unbelievably high quality cricket facilities.
“I think back now to when I was a young player, at club grounds. The chance here, for young players to step on to the same facilities that IPL franchises train on is a real point of difference.
“We think the extra 10 or 15 minute commute [from Dubai] is worth it, to train somewhere that is not just high quality but genuinely inspiring.”
Company Fact Box
Company name/date started: Abwaab Technologies / September 2019
Founders: Hamdi Tabbaa, co-founder and CEO. Hussein Alsarabi, co-founder and CTO
Based: Amman, Jordan
Sector: Education Technology
Size (employees/revenue): Total team size: 65. Full-time employees: 25. Revenue undisclosed
Stage: early-stage startup
Investors: Adam Tech Ventures, Endure Capital, Equitrust, the World Bank-backed Innovative Startups SMEs Fund, a London investment fund, a number of former and current executives from Uber and Netflix, among others.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
