News: UAE to send youth pace bowlers to India…..

A little surprising that a ‘real’ development news has come out of UAE, but they are planning to hold a talent identification (or perhaps it would get classified as talent selection) clinic in which they will select 1 bowler each from U17, U15 and U19 and send them to the MRF Pace foundation in India [...]

Opinion: Lowdown on UAE…..

UAE squad had about 3-4 born and bred players……. but if I look at their performing players in the ACC Trophy, it is still an expat team……
Ali Asad (Expat, from Pakistan)
8-1-18-1 v Saudi Arabia
8-2-23-0 v Malaysia
10-0-24-2 v Nepal
10-3-23-0 v Hong Kong
Mohammed Iqbal
51 v Saudi Arabia
45 v Qatar
Saqib Ali (expat, from Pakistan)
132* v Saudi Arabia
52* v [...]

Opinion: ACC Trophy… little to celebrate….

UAE has thrashed Hong Kong by 5 wickets, needing only 35 overs to wrap up the match…….
Hence, nobody, except for Saudi Arabia in one game, came close to UAE. Saudi Arabia too probably need to be checked by the ACC for their player eligability, I cannot imagine how else a team can improve so drastically [...]

Opinion: Of UAE Cricket….

Dilawar Mani, who is Ehsan Mani's brother, has recently been appointed the CEO of Abu Dhabi cricket association. He talks about a couple of things that I have been mentioning must be done to make the UAE cricket progress further in an interview. One is to spread the game amongst the Arabs (you can call [...]

Opinion: On the Ind v WI ‘expansion’ series

Cricinfo recently wrote an article title Leave Americans to Baseball, in which they discussed how the expansion of cricket is a non starter. I have in one of my previous blog entries explained how some of these expat based countries end up getting the limelight, and take the focus away from countries where cricket ACTUALLY [...]

Opinion: An opening for Second tier countries…. but not all…..

One thing that the developing Cricket world usually forgets is that the English county teams, at least 10 of the 18, every year embark on a 10-14 day pre season tour to warm up for the county season. In all cases, they tour countries NOT in Europe, because the weather in March and April is [...]

Professionalism in the Associates

I was talking to someone yesterday and I realized something. Something that is fundamental to raising the standard of the associate nations compared to the test teams.
Nepal just beat NZ and SA at the U19 level. Now, if you were to take the same players from these countries 10 years into the future, when they [...]

U19 Asia Cup and Nepal…

Nepal has crashed out of the U19 World Cup. It is a pity. It is a pity because they lost to Zimbabwe by 2 runs, and were infact coasting at 148/2 in 30 overs at one time chasing 209. They had also let Zimbabwe off the hook when the african team was 94/6 in the first [...]

League and Knock out cup…

I think I have figured out a solution for the ICC Asia region, whether there should be a league structure or Cup structure.
I think there should be both. Europe style 3 six team divisions, and also a sub regional knockout cup. That way, you will ensure that the best teams are getting the best oppurtunities, [...]

Regionals format: Cup or Leagues?

Does the Asian System fast track a number of cricket teams in a shorter span of time, or is the European league Structure better?. I tend to agree with the latter. In my opinion, the former actually manages to impede the development process in some promising countries. I will give an example….. of Nepal.
 In the last 3-4 [...]