Dubai: Three expats in the UAE are celebrating a victory of their own in the International Cricket Council (ICC) World Test Championship.
On Sunday, Australia beat India to lift the champion trophy. And marking a win for themselves were Ali Al Khairo, Shalu Abdul Jabbar, and Alexander Aninias - a trio from Dubai behind the animation used in the Champion final.
Together, as the startup team of a Dubai-based creative video production agency, they created the ident shown in the final. The 34-second-long video, produced by 9T Studio, was seen by millions of cricket fans worldwide during the global sporting event’s final held from June 7 to 11.
The ident was broadcast across various platforms, including television channels, social media and streaming platforms associated with the ICC and its partners.
Ali Al Khairo, founder and executive producer at 9T Studio, told Gulf News that being a startup, their project being watched by so many people meant a huge success for the team. “We feel like we are on the right path with the right team, right spirit and motivation,” he said.
He added that the startup, which celebrated its first anniversary just a few days ago, had secured a project from the ICC earlier this year for the Women’s T20 World Cup in cricket. The success of their title promo and players’ profile videos for that tournament led to the team being approached to pitch for the ICC WTC Final ident.
How they made it
Shalu Abdul Jabbar, the creative director and the brain behind the ICC WTC ident, said he had researched well before submitting a storyboard to the client. “They wanted us to choose some elements that will keep the vibes of test cricket. We had to retain the golden and chrome colours. We also had to incorporate the images of some of the veteran test players along with those of new players,” he added.
The only challenge, he said, was the thought of working for such a huge organisation and the massive reach of the product, especially in his cricket-crazy home country, India.
The recognition for the ICC project is “kind of an early birthday gift” for 3D animation specialist Alexander Aninias, who is turning 21 next week. Born and raised in Dubai, he said he had seen many cricket fans. “But I was not at all into cricket. Honestly, I got to know what ICC is when I did this project. I concentrated more on the design aspect of branding the organisation and the event and brought in some new elements to execute the storyboard and clear instructions given by Shalu,” said the Filipino expat.
Hailing from Iraq, Al Khairo also admitted to having no knowledge about cricket until moving to Dubai in 2007. Reflecting on Dubai’s creative environment, he said the city is the ideal place for creative individuals to dream big and achieve their goals. Despite fierce competition among scores of media production companies in Dubai, he believes that creativity and hard work will lead to well-deserved rewards here.
“I feel Dubai’s presence in the global creative landscape has been further solidified with such achievements. This further motivates our team to strive for higher quality in content creation, which is one of the biggest growing industries globally.”
