Dubai: The UAE as hosts of the eight nation Desert T20 tournament march into the event with an edge over all their rivals, skipper Amjad Javed has said. This tournament, the first of its kind organised by the Emirates Cricket Board (ECB), will commence from Saturday with matches to be played at Abu Dhabi Zayed Cricket Stadium and Dubai International stadium.
The captains of all the eight teams — Kyle Coetzer (Scotland), Babar Hayat (Hong Kong), William Porterfield (Ireland), Javed (UAE), Sultan Ahmed (Oman), Sarel Burger (Namibia), Peter Borren (The Netherlands) and Mohamad Asghar (Afghanistan) — lined up at the Dubai International stadium for a photo shoot on Wednesday evening.
Speaking to Gulf News, Javed said: “Twenty20 is such a format that no teams are favourites and we all start with equal chance to win the tournament. UAE has an edge over other teams because we have beaten Afghanistan which is the highest ranked team of the tournament in the 2016 Asia Cup.”
Javed admitted that the UAE is in a tough pool with Afghanistan ranked ninth, Ireland ranked 17th and Namibia — although they are yet to figure in a ranking — are a formidable team too.
“It’s a tough pool with Afghanistan and Ireland but Twenty20 is all about playing well on that day and if one bowler can bowl a tight over and take three to four wickets and a batsman can hit over 70 runs then anyone can emerge the winner. We have batsmen like Shaiman Anwar and Rameez Shahzad who can hit hard and have been consistent and also Rohan Mustafa who has been consistently giving us good starts,” said Javed.
UAE is ranked 15th among Twenty20 international teams. Incidentally, Mustafa, who has been consistent with the bat, has been made the vice-captain of the UAE team.
Javed is delighted with his team combination. “We have so much talent in our team with different types of batsmen — especially like Shaiman who can be really dangerous in the T20 format and there are also some very good all-rounders. Zahoor Ahmed, who is our new pacer, had played first class cricket for Pakistan and is now eligible to play for UAE. Ghulam Shabbir has also been scoring well and is a good find.” added Javed, who himself is a fine hard-hitting lower order batsman and an accurate pacer.
The UAE has been undergoing intense training under their stand-in coach, former England Test star Owais Shah. “Shah is very good and has been giving useful tips but a coach needs time to mould the players. The UAE’s biggest drawback has been its batting and it needs time for any coach to correct the batsmen,” said Javed, who wants 2017 to be a successful year for the team.
“In 2016 we lost some close matches. In fact we should have won our recent matches against Afghanistan and England. In two matches against both of them we were really lucky. We gave them a good fight. It is important to have a winning mindset as if only we believe we can win we would be able to do it.”
Javed went on to thank ECB for organising such a big tournament here. “We don’t get to play Test teams so it is important to play top associate teams regularly. The new bunch of officials in the ECB like Zayed Abbas and Khurram Khan are doing a great job as they know the importance of exposure for our players. If we can reach the final of this tournament we can jump up by three places in world ranking and that will be a big boost for the team.”
