Owais Shah puts hand up for full-time role as UAE cricket coach: ‘I would love to do the job’

When sports teams are struggling, those paid to coach them must crave the chance to get out there themselves and show the players how it should done.

The recent form of the UAE cricket team has been characterised by regular batting collapses.

Fortunately, their current coach has the benefit of more than 16,000 first-class runs behind him, as well as having played Twenty20 cricket in each leading league around the world.

During his role in interim charge of the UAE, Owais Shah, the former England batsman, has often taken to the middle with his players – at least in practice.

As the national team look ahead to a fresh start in 2017 with the new Desert Twenty20, it must be hoped the batsmen have learned a thing or two from him.

“We have been playing a lot of practice games, and I myself have been involved with them,” Shah said of his methods at trying to revive the fortunes of UAE cricket.

“If I am out there fielding, I can be talking to the batsmen, asking them what they are thinking, how they are thinking, how they are planning their partnerships.

“Also, I have been trying to give them the perspective of: the fielding team are planning this, so what are they going to do to cope with it?”

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Shah has not officially retired from playing himself. Having had no professional cricket last season, though, he accepts his playing days are likely behind him.

He is not the first UAE coach to try to show his charges what he wants from them, as well as tell them.

Aaqib Javed, his highly successful predecessor, made a point of it, too. When he first arrived, Aaqib was notable for the amount of laps he would run around the boundary during breaks in play, and the start and end of each day.

It was not exclusively for the benefit of his own waistline. He was trying to show his players: do as I say, and as I do.

Aaqib was fitter than the majority of UAE players at that point. Now the side is mostly professional, fitness is less of an issue. The major failing of the side in 2016’s annus horribilis instead was the batting line-up.

It collapsed far too frequently. In the 18 months since Khurram Khan and Saqib Ali retired, rarely have established players actually won matches for the national team with the bat.

Of the 11 limited-overs internationals the UAE lost in 2016, for example, seven were due to failed run chases.

Khurram and Saqib, mainstays of the batting line-up for a decade, were conspicuous in their ability to take their side over the winning line when set. That rarely happens these days, but it is not due to a lack of talent, according to Shah.

“I am trying to make them understand scenarios, so they can make the right decisions under pressure,” he said.

“All those sort of things do come with experience, but I am trying to help them cope better. Making the right decision under pressure is ultimately what an experienced player does.”

Shah’s extended interim spell in charge of the national team is due to end this month. His initial contact with the team was as a batting consultant during the UK tour last summer, when Paul Franks, another former England international, was in temporary charge.

Shah arrived in Dubai later in the year, unexpectedly to fill the breach as head coach, and he says he has warmed to the task since then.

“The capacity I was over in was a batting consultancy role, but I was very much open, if somebody gave me the opportunity to be a head coach,” he said.

“Of course I would love to do the job. That is how I always thought, and always wanted to do. Nothing has changed. If somebody gave me the opportunity to coach UAE on a full-time basis, fantastic.

“I have done it for two months now, I have thoroughly enjoyed it, and I would love to continue doing it, if given the opportunity.”

The Emirates Cricket Board (ECB) remain noncommittal on who will be the permanent coach, even though it is eight months since Aaqib vacated the position.

“The decision is with the board and I will not be able to answer on their behalf,” Zayed Abbas, the board member who is the ECB’s new official spokesman, said.

“Like any other position that has to be filled, you have to appoint someone to handle it until you hire the permanent person. We are still in that stage right now.”

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The UAE suffered a scare ahead of the Desert Twenty20 when Mohammed Naveed limped off the field in the warm up match against a development XI on Tuesday.

Naveed, the leading strike bowler, managed just five deliveries in the win, over a side made up of players on the fringes of the the national team, as well as the on-loan Scotland player Michael Leask, before leaving the field.

Concerns were tempered, however, by the fact he was later fit enough to bat for the opposition, in the practice match at The Sevens.

Otherwise, the portents were good for the UAE, who managed a 32-run win. Even though the development side were on course for their 155-run target early in their chase, their challenge was built on 53 by Ghulam Shabbir, who will be the UAE wicketkeeper in the Desert T20 anyway.

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Desert Twenty20

■ Pool A: Afghanistan, UAE, Ireland, Namibia

■ Pool B: Netherlands, Scotland, Hong Kong, Oman

Fixtures

Saturday, January 14