Today's Edition
Kuumar Shyam (Abu Dhabi)
The ICC Women’s T20 World Cup is round the corner with 10 days to go when the showpiece event for female cricketers starts in Dubai and Sharjah, the UAE stepping in as hosts instead of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh went into an upheaval on the political front and the ensuing regime change prompted the world body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), to look towards the Emirates Cricket Board for help, not for the first time.
In recent years, the UAE has been the last-gasp alternative for many ICC events, the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the Pakistan Super League (PSL), while also hosting bilateral series for countries, at times only for logistical reasons.
Subhan Ahmed, Advisor to Emirates Cricket Board (ECB), says it has been easy to do so and the ECB has the ability to step in as a neutral venue in the space of “couple of hours”, in an exclusive interview with Aletihad.
“We can talk of many challenges, but it eventually comes to the support of the government here in the UAE and the ease of getting the business done, whatever type of event that may be,” says Ahmed even as he rushes from one task to another in the countdown to the World Cup.
“It is a joke around here that the ICC should nominate as a back-up venue officially, but seriously, in the corridors of cricket, people know and have experienced how we have hosted events in the past, with tremendous success,” he says from Dubai, which is also the host to the ICC headquarters, thus making it easier to communicate before and during the events held here once the world body has given the go-ahead sign.
Given that the original hosts tend to wait until the last minute to concede ground when a cloud arises on their hosting possibilities for any reason, that could make it more challenging for the ECB to step in as hosts, but Ahmed insists they are always ready to go, again stressing that their preparedness is what helps seal the deal and made possible because of the same ease of doing business.
“Usually it is short notice, yes, but all we need is to go the government who give their nod at first instance, which means visas can be approved, security and lodging arrangements follow immediately... our state-of-the-art infrastructure, the stadiums, are like plug-and-play so it has never been an issue.
“It is like a well-oiled machine with our set of SOPs [standard operating procedures] in place that get activated within one hour once the official confirmation order comes. It is that easy for us.”
Ahmed recalls the toughest challenge that came close to testing the ECB’s readiness was hosting the IPL in 2020 when the COVID-19 period was at its peak. “Despite our preparedness, one or two cases cropping up among teams and the quarantine protocols being such that even our best efforts could have gone to waste for no fault of ours, but thankfully our systems were robust and it passed off peacefully.”
That experience also has given Ahmed and his team the confidence of anything that is thrown at them. However, pressed for something he sees as the flip side of last-minute requests, he said: “It is understandable but the nature is such that we do not get enough time to print and sell tickets despite the quick turnaround, like in this case of the Women’s T20 World Cup where we got tickets only today [Tuesday] and very less time to push it out.”
