Time ripe for UAE cricket to build on IPL success

Emirates must now focus on bringing India back to play international tournaments and bilateral series, writes Paul Radley.

Imagine the crowd-puller MS Dhoni playing in his India blue, as opposed to his Chennai yellow, against Pakistan in the UAE, writes our columnist. Pawan Singh / The National

Watching international cricket in the UAE is going to be a considerable comedown after the razzmatazz of the Indian Premier League.

It will need something major – something with spark and fervour and energy – to get anywhere close to living up to what has gone on at the UAE’s cricket grounds the past 15 days.

In short, the international game’s administrators are going to need to make an effort – which will be a novelty.

The IPL may have the unique selling point of having the sport’s best players all in a pot together, playing its most accessible format.

But the organisers of India’s Twenty20 league also have a firm grasp of the fact spectators need a little bit extra from their live experience. TV viewing is so easy and insightful these days, the compulsion actually to be there in person has gradually faded.

If you are going to make the effort to go to the stadium – especially given that the grounds in Dubai and Abu Dhabi are outside the city centres – you need to feel like you are taking in an event, something you can tell your friends about. The IPL nails it.

Yes, at times, it does feel overly manufactured and contrived – organised fun with a nauseating master of ceremonies who leaves you hoping for a power cut.

Even on days when the cricket is pallid, the ambience never is – “so the (insert meaningless, hyperbolic team name of choice here) won by six wickets with nine balls to spare when chasing 125, the top-scorer made 32 and the bowlers took two wickets each, did you see that bloke with the hyper-coloured afro wig, with his face painted yellow and the Dhoni fixation? Nutter, or what?”

International cricket needs to revisit the concept of an enjoyable day out. If it just drifts along with the sort of fare offered by the series staged in the UAE earlier this winter between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, for example, then it will wither.

Those matches felt like an afterthought of meaningless and joyless cricket, asphyxiated by atmosphere-free grounds. A world away from the IPL, then.

If it is left to the sport to sell itself, then there really is only one series that could reproduce the sort of extraordinary ticket sales that have occurred in the UAE recently: India versus Pakistan.

Sunil Gavaskar, the interim boss of Indian cricket and the IPL, said when the travelling show landed in the UAE that he hoped it would pave the way for their national team to return to play here.

It needed the IPL to be successful to make that happen. A string of sell-outs, plus a clean rap sheet (so far, at least) when it comes to scandal, is testament to the fact it has achieved that – and then some.

So what about seeing MS Dhoni batting in Sharjah in the blue of India rather than the yellow of Chennai, with Saeed Ajmal ambling in to bowl in a green Pakistan shirt (long-sleeved, of course)? Ticket sellers would need security to deal with the queues.

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