Today's Edition
KUUMAR SHYAM (Aletihad)
New UAE cricket coach Lalchand Rajput got a good glimpse of the immediate task in his inbox tray when the national team lost to Canada by three wickets in their World Cricket League 2 match in Dubai on Wednesday.
In his first assignment since taking over, Rajput oversaw a batting failure even as the UAE fielded three debutants in their opening match of the WCL2, which serves as a pathway to the ICC Cricket World Cup. There are eight teams in the fray.
The top four will be joined four coming from the Qualifier play-offs, based on the previous qualification cycle, as well as teams that did not qualify automatically from the ODI rankings.
The match against Canada is part of a 11-day long tri-series along with Scotland. Most of the UAE players had to switch from the Twenty20 mode after the recently concluded International League Twenty20 where captain Muhammad Waseem was the top UAE batsman. He was awarded the Blue belt of ILT20 after the final on February 17 with Rajput, a former opening batsman, watching from the stands.
But it was a tough initiation for someone like a young Tanish Suri. Opening the play after being put in to bat, Suri was run out and set in the nervous tone for UAE straightaway. Alishan Sharafu and Asif Khan could not settle in longer after reaching double-digit scores while Waseem played the anchor's knock to lead by example.
His anxiety at the cusp of a half-century saw him get caught and bowled at 49, leaving UAE at a precarious 107 for five. Some rearguard action from debutant Zuhaib Zubair (31), Basil Hameed (19) and Aayan Khan (38) took them to 194 all out.
The bowling attack responded well under pressure, but opener Srimanth Wijeyaratne (59) and Nicholas Kirton (68) proved difficult to prise out. When the latter departed, UAE still had a fighting chance with Canada at 134 for six, but captain Saad bin Zafar (21) and Dillon Heyliger (10 not out) saw them through.
