Boost for UAE cricket after national team’s qualification for ICC T20 World Cup

In last week’s final of the International Cricket Council Men’s T20 World Cup 2022 qualifying tournament in Oman, the UAE beat Ireland.

Since, by virtue of winning their semi-finals two days earlier, both teams had qualified for the finals in Australia, it could be argued that this was an insignificant match. However, apart from the prestige of becoming the tournament winner, the result contributes to future ICC rankings.

The other significance of the match was the margin of the UAE’s victory. This was by eight wickets, with Muhammad Waseem scoring 112 runs, following his 70 in the semi-final.

Waseem was spotted in 2017 while playing in Lahore and took up the offer of a residency visa to join a company in Dubai. He became eligible to represent the UAE in April, after completing his three-year residency requirement, as per ICC regulations.

Under these rules, a player can participate in an international match or an ICC event for a national cricket federation when at least one of three criteria has been met. These require that the player was born in the country, able to demonstrate they were a national of the country or had been a resident of the country for the immediately preceding three years prior to a submission being lodged.

In the team which beat Ireland in the final, six players had been born in Pakistan and four in India, arriving in the UAE at differing stages of their lives. Only the captain was born in the Emirates. Qualification for the ICC T20 World Cup represents a dramatic turnaround in fortunes for UAE cricket, which failed to qualify for the 2019 tournament, during which process the team unraveled.

This was caused by the revelation of match-fixing by some of the players. Three players, including the