World Twenty20 outing can help UAE cricketers prepare for 2015

Paul Radley highlights five lessons that the UAE players should heed following their early exit from the World Twenty20.

The Khurram Khan-led UAE cricket team lost all their matches at the World Twenty20. Pal Pillai / Getty Images

The UAE’s World Twenty20 adventure should never have been considered a means to an end.

Debuting at this competition and playing at a global tournament of any sort for the first time in 18 years, should have been an end in itself for the national team.

They get a second chance in about a year’s time, though, when they travel to the 50-over World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

It is never too early to start learning. This was an instructive experience for the part-time cricketers of the national team.

Here are five of the most pertinent things they learnt from their time in Bangladesh.

Dropped catches lose matches

There are only so many places you can hide on a cricket field. Deep fine leg tends to be one. By which reckoning, the UAE have four specialist deep fine leg fielders.

There are few things more humbling in cricket than dropping a catch. When it then gets replayed from five different angles, in high-definition, the agony must be acute.

Shelling five chances in their opening game against the Netherlands was a chastening experience for the UAE.

The trouble is, the national team’s weakest fielders are among their most reliable performers with bat or ball. So it is not an easy problem to solve.

Bringing live-wire fieldsmen like Chirag Suri or Adil Reyal into the squad would not guarantee the weight of runs someone like Shaiman Anwar does. But it may be more important to the overall effort by the time the UAE head to Australia.

Television is a great tutor

Aaqib Javed, the UAE coach, is relentlessly optimistic. The slant he put on the UAE’s opening night stage fright was heroically positive.

Rather than chastise his players for basic dropped catches, he was reasonable.

“This level tests you,” said Aaqib, who was at his seventh global tournament after six as a player and coach with Pakistan.

“It shows you from different angles, how you made a mistake, what were the possibilities, and it is a really good thing to learn.

“While it exposes you, there is a greater chance for you to pick up things and repair.

“The crowd, TV, comments – these are new things for them. Hopefully we will take it as positive.”

Professionalism is the only way

It is romantic to think the UAE’s cricketers could leave their office desks then go and compete against the world’s best. This tournament showed it to be folly, too.

None of the teams they played had more natural talent than the UAE. Each was infinitely better drilled, though, and there is a reason for that. Zimbabwe, Ireland and the Netherlands have professional players. The UAE do not have one.

“The cricket board in the UAE have to look into this matter,” Khurram Khan, the captain, said.

“Even if you have six, seven, eight guys who are fully professional and let them get fit, it is going to make a difference. It is a good idea, the suggestion is already there, and hopefully they are working on it.”

Even with increased funding and guaranteed one-day international status for the next four years, it is easier said than done.

“In an ideal world you would have centrally contracted players and they would be fully professional, but obviously that has its challenges in the UAE in terms of job security,” said David East, the chief executive of the Emirates Cricket Board.

Sixes are not the only way

The UAE have plenty of players in their ranks who can clear the boundary. Faizan Asif hit an 81-metre six in the first over of the tournament.

Shaiman Anwar’s two against Ireland were similarly sizeable and Amjad Javed, the all-rounder, is the biggest hitter of all the UAE’s players. Yet Faizan’s strike rate was just 81.81, while Javed’s was 87.87.

Even though power hitting is thought of as the main staple of T20 cricket, it was dot balls that did for the UAE.

Against Ireland, there were 59 dot balls in the national team's batting effort. So nearly half the overs in their innings were maidens.

They will need to find a way of avoiding getting stuck in the mud like that when they reach Australia.

Even amateurs can be celebs

The UAE’s cricketers could come back here next month to play in a lower-tier tournament and go completely unnoticed.

Yet, even though none of them are stars, they were cooped up in their hotels in Dhaka and Sylhet and needed a security detail when they went out anywhere.

It may have felt peculiar, but such tends to be the way of global tournaments these days, especially ones staged on the subcontinent.

“There is a lot of security, you are locked up in your room and there are not many chances to go out,” Aaqib said.

“This is what modern day life is for cricketers. It is a good thing if you take it positively, think that you are an important person and that people want to protect you, to meet you and see you.”

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