Sport | Cricket
UAE cricket: Beyond all boundaries
The game was once played in the desert and empty streets. Today the UAE is the headquarters of the ICC, cricket's global body.
- By K.R. Nayar, Senior Reporter
- Published: 23:30 July 17, 2009
- Image Credit: Gulf News Archive
- Pakistani legend Javed Miandad (left), with a fan and a photographer, after playing a game on a makeshift pitchwith a sandy outfield in the UAE.
The game was once played in the desert and empty streets. Today the UAE is the headquarters of the ICC, cricket's global body.
Cricket in the UAE literally took off from the runway of a makeshift airport. The game was first played in the Abu Shagh ara area near the Old Sharjah airport. It was a Royal Air Force base and the servicemen played the game regularly during the early sixties.
The airport was small and surrounded by desert. Planes landed once or twice a week and the British armed forces used the runway as their pitch.
No one believed then that Sharjah would, one day, go on to clinch a place in the history of world cricket by being a venue that hosted the maximum number of One-Day Internationals (at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium) and that the UAE would go on to become the home for world cricket's governing body.
The man who sowed the seeds for cricket to blossom in the desert was none other than cricket lover and businessman Abdul Rahman Bukhatir. He believed that cricket could be played in a country where the annual rain fall was a mere 6cm.
Muddy areas that were levelled and hardened for vehicles to move became the first wickets. Water was an expensive commodity and so it was impossible to create green-top pitches and outfields. The muddy areas were then improvised to form cement wickets.
By the early seventies the demand to play the game increased and the first cement wicket was prepared near the Al Khan round-about in Sharjah. Bukhatir took the initiative to organise the first league in 1974-75.
"It was the first organised league and was played behind the present Safeer Mall on the Dubai-Sharjah Road. It was called the Bukhatir league and it is still being organised. This year will witness the 35th edition of the league," recalled Ali Anwar Jafri, the secretary of the Sharjah Cricket Council for nearly three decades. Jafri once played in the league as a leg-break googly bowler. The top teams in the mid seventies were Galadari Brothers, Sharjah Club, Valikas and Friends Union of Saeed Ahmad. By the early eighties, emerging outfits like the Lanka Lions, Bank of Oman, Dulsco, Abu Dhabi Al Shaab, Al Ain Pakistan Centre, Middle East Bank, Air India, Indian Sports Club, Dubai Bank and Young Challengers began to appear on the scene.
The Sharjah Club has won the Bukhatir league a record 14 times (nine times in a row from 1977-78). "Bukhatir himself captained the Sharjah Club from the mid- seventies till the end of the 1980-81 season. Later players like Ram Ramesh, Ejaz Hussain, Azhar Qureshi, Mohammad Munir Tallat Butt, Humayun Sumar, Shehzad Altaf, Shakil Ur Rahman, Irfan Ansari and Sultan Zarouni captained this outfit," remarked Anwar who also had a stint as skipper in the 1989-90 season.
At around this time, cricket began to be played in Dubai. The Darjeeling Cricket Club, comprising English expatriates, created two grounds and invited clubs to play. It is rumoured that they used to invite strong teams like the Dubai Police and Dubai Electricity to play there every week, but weaker teams like the Punjab Cricket Club were invited only once in three weeks.
The hard ground near the Diera taxi stand also became a popular area for the game. The muddy sand in this area was hardened for cars to take a short cut to Al Nasr square. The enthusiasm to play the game was so evident that players used to come as early as 3am on Fridays to fix the stumps and sleep there. "The grounds were so crowded that bowlers from other teams stopped when a batsman from another game was in action," recalled Tariq Butt, the UAE's most experienced umpire.
In February 1976, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) with players like Imran Khan, Wasim Bari and Salim Altaf played a UAE Select XI. The match was played on a cement wicket with a sandy outfield at the Al Khan area pitch. According to old timers, Imran Khan even played a match at the Al Wasl football ground and hit 22 sixes with some of them sailing out of the ground. The organisers finally had to plead with the handsome allrounder to stop hitting as they feared they would run out of balls.
With passion for the game slowly increasing all over the country, Bukhatir took the ambitious step of bringing international cricket to the UAE. Bukhatir built the Sharjah Cricket Stadium during the early eighties. The stadium wicket was first made of cement but later converted into astro turf. The first match was staged here in April 1981 between the Javed Miandad XI and Sunil Gavaskar XI. Encouraged by the huge turn out, Bukhatir organised the Gavaskar XI versus Intikhab Alam XI.
Soon the Sharjah stadium became a turf wicket and in 1984 it hosted the first international match. This, for the record, was also the first Asia Cup tournament. Bukhatir then set up the Cricketers Benefit Fund Series (CBFS), with the aim of honouring international cricketers of the past and the present with a benefit purse in recognition of their service to the game, and staged matches. The stadium, which started with limited seats and modest facilities, soon became a popular venue among cricketers. By 2002, the seating capacity rose to 27,000 and floodlights were introduced.
The UAE Emirates Cricket Board was constituted on May 3, 1989 and the national team was formed. The team went on to lift the International Cricket Council (ICC) Trophy in 1994 and even qualified to play in the 1996 World Cup — UAE cricket's crowning moment. The UAE also went on to win the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) Trophy on four occasions between 2000 and 2006.
With the focus slowly shifting from Sharjah, Abu Dhabi built the Zayed Cricket Stadium in 2004 and staged its first One-Day match in April 2006. In 2008, the Dubai Sports City presented its state of the art cricket stadium to the world and staged its first One-Day match on April 22, 2009.
With the International Cricket Council (ICC) moving its headquarters to UAE in 2005 and the ICC Global Cricket Academy nearing completion, the UAE is now poised to become the hub of world cricket.
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