UAE Cricket League
Winners of the UAE Cricket League Men's T20 Final 2018 Image Credit: Emirates Cricket

Dubai: The cricket fever has already started in the UAE with several Indian Premier League teams getting into the groove in various emirates. Emirates Cricket is set to increase the tempo by a few notches with the commencement of the UAE domestic cricket on Friday.

The first edition of the 50-over Wolf 777 News Emirates D50, in partnership with RedBear Sports (Dubai) and supported by Wolf77News.com, is set to kick-start the highly successful domestic tournament calendar, which will sit alongside the existing D10 and D20 events.

Mubashshir Usmani, Secretary General Emirates Cricket said: “The addition of the Wolf 777 News Emirates D50 to our calendar is an important strategic milestone for us, as we develop and deepen our player pool in 50-over cricket.

“It’s very important that our players continue to be challenged and given opportunities to grow under match-day pressure, and for our high performance team to identify and assess the next group of representative players as we look toward the ICC’s Associate playing and pathway calendar being finalised and re-introduced.” added Usmani.

In a proven format the six-competing teams, carrying the names of Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Abu Dhabi, Fujairah and Emirates Blues, will comprise a mix of the Emirates’ most talented senior and up-and-coming players. All matches will be played at the Rajasthan Royals Academy at The Emirates Sevens Stadium Dubai, with 16 of the 18 games to be live-streamed.

For the first time, the final round, semi-finals and the final of the tournament, which concludes on September 19 — the day IPL begins in UAE — will be broadcast live on Dubai Sports.