UAE cricket generation’s gap to end, but lesson in history stays for amateurs

The feat of 1996 heroes will be repeated after an 18-year wait but some of the stars tell Paul Radley that nothing has changed for the amateur cricketers who work six days a week.

On March 1, 1996, Peter Cantrell, left, of the Netherlands scored 47 in a total of 216 while Imtiaz Abbasi looks on in Lahore, Pakistan. Zafar Ahmed / AP Photo

Eighteen years in which the UAE were conspicuous by their absence from cricket’s flagship competitions will be neatly book-ended when they play the Netherlands on Monday.

The Dutch were the one side the national team managed to beat on their first trip to a global event, at the 1996 World Cup on the subcontinent.

Despite the transience of the sporting landscape here, eight of the 14-man squad from back then are still resident here.

Two of those who have remained most closely connected with the sport here say they are pleased the national team have made it back onto the big stage. But they do wonder what took them so long.

Mohammed Ishaq, who scored an unbeaten 51 in the win over the Netherlands in Lahore in 1996, believes the situation facing UAE cricketers today differs little from back then.

Meaning, the top players still struggle to devote all their time to cricket as their day jobs must come first.

“I am really pleased the team have made it there and hope they are very successful,” said Ishaq, 51, who lives in Abu Dhabi.

“It was an unforgettable moment for me when we arrived at the World Cup in Pakistan. We achieved this opportunity after playing at the ICC Trophy in 1994, but after experiencing the World Cup two years later, we had to take jobs if they came along.

“The players who are playing international cricket now still have to work six days per week.”

Ishaq is wheelchair-bound, after a road accident five years ago. He retains a deep interest in the domestic game, though, as his son, Abdullah, is a promising player who was in contention to be selected for the UAE side in the recent Under-19 World Cup.

“The UAE isn’t like the UK, India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, in that there is no real structured domestic cricket here,” he said.

“With just Friday matches and not much chance to practise more than once or twice per week because of work or studies, it is difficult for cricketers. They have to practise on a daily basis to be successful.”

Shahzad Altaf, the seam bowler whose parsimonious spell of one for 15 from 10 overs laid the platform for the win against the Dutch, is still heavily involved in the sport here, too.

“I don’t know why they couldn’t qualify since then,” said the Dubai-based Altaf.

“When we qualified we had a very good team and after that they had very good players, too. Maybe, they did not give total attention to cricket and interest lapsed.

“We came back from the World Cup and nobody gave us any help.”

More than any other player from 1996, Altaf’s fingerprints remain all over the sport here.

After the World Cup, he helped coach the national team, before losing patience with the lack of progress they were making,and starting his own coaching school.

Now known as the Young Talents Academy, it has been a ready production line of players for UAE cricket.

In recent years cricketers such as Chirag Suri and Rameez Shahzad, Altaf's son, have graduated to be capped by the UAE senior team. Ahmed Raza, the left-arm spinner who is seen as the heir apparent to Khurram Khan as the UAE captain, was a 10-year-old inductee of Altaf's academy 15 years ago.

He believes that the long hiatus between appearances at global tournaments could have been avoided if the players from 1996 had been better utilised, either as coaches or as part of the national selection panel.

Altaf is sure the national team are in good hands now, as he believes the UAE’s upturn in fortunes are down to Aaqib Javed’s appointment as coach.

“Aaqib is a very good guy who wants to promote cricket,” Altaf said. “He has been to the academies, tells us to call him if we see a player we think is talented. He is the guy who has changed UAE cricket.”

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