Dubai: The UAE women’s cricket team finished seventh in the ICC Women’s World T20 Qualifier 2018 in the Netherlands. It was a new experience for the team which was participating in the eight-team tournament for the first time in European conditions.
Despite the poor show, the Emirates Cricket Board (ECB) is looking at the positives and build a strong team in the future. It believes that from being a nation which once struggled to find 15 women cricketers, they have come a long way to finish runner-up in the (ICC) Women’s T20 Asia Qualifiers in Thailand in November last year and winners in the GCC Championship twice.
Andrew Russell, the ECB national development manager, in an exclusive interview to Gulf News reveals on how much effort has gone in to help UAE team reach the qualifier and his plans to build a stronger performance for the upcoming tournaments.
Gulf News: After such a promising performance in the Asia Qualifiers what actually went wrong in the Women’s World T20 Qualifier 2018 in the Netherlands? Do you think that preparations were not enough for the team?
We did prepare very hard. After the Asian Qualifiers we brought the girls together and they played in the National League where they had statistics over their performance. So each girl played games against the other academies in that league. In addition to that we made the potential players to play in boy’s competitions as UAE’s Potential Development squad. We also had Kavita Pandya, strength and conditioning coach of the India women’s cricket team here. She worked with the ladies through a strength and conditioning camp for nearly five weeks. We also played a four-match series against the Sri Lankan army, which we drew 2-2. The women’s team did train four times a week two months preceding to the Netherlands qualifier. We also flew the team early to Netherlands to play warm-up games.
So did the unfamiliar European conditions turn out to be too tough for the women?
We wanted them to get match practice in European conditions because that is something they just did not have. What we could do here was to stretch them to a good standard by playing against the boys. What we cannot teach them are the conditions and that they will have to learn from experience.
Are any tournaments being planned for them to make them stronger?
From September-October onwards we want to create the academies league again and that will run for a long period of time. We have highlighted four academies to take the lead in women’s cricket and we will try and feed the players into their squads from schools. We want to create a hub for cricketers in different regions and they play in a league over the course of three months and then get statistics on their performance and thus select a preliminary squad for the international tournaments.
So will there be a focus on players who could not perform in the Netherlands qualifier?
We do get the coach’s and manager’s feedback on where the players lacked and which players are struggling in certain aspects. We tailor programmes to help them and will also have individual programmes for them.
So are any tournaments being planned for them to display their skills and gain confidence?
The ICC World T20 will happen at the end of this year and from there we start a new cycle of internationals competitions. We are yet to get the schedule but we are going to have an Asian Qualifier, similar to what we played last year. We will prepare stronger for the coming events.
How has the promotion of girls cricket been at the grass roots level?
We have done a big push at the grass roots. Our development officers and women’s teams will go into schools and run introductory programmes for them. The whole point is to try and draw school players into a set up where they can play for an academy or for a team. We have approached five schools at the moment and we will push it to 15 to 20 schools.
Are number of women cricketers in the UAE on the rise and are many willing to take up the game seriously?
What we plan to do is that players who are eligible for national selection will be playing in the main academy league. There will be about 120 players who are in contention for it. The cricket playing audience of women is a lot bigger now. Right now we have Murali Sockalingam as the head coach. The four highlighted cricket academies are G Force, Victoria Cricket Academy, Desert Cubs and Abu Dhabi Zayed Cricket Academy. In last year’s league, Zayed Academy beat Desert Cubs in the final. It was a great performance from Zayed Academy as it was the first year of them actually having a women’s team. We are also looking into other emirates especially Al Ain.
So what would be the immediate plans?
What I love to see is more competitions for women at the senior level and get it expanded with some more teams. We should have more junior competitions where they start playing matches and create a path way to senior cricket.
