So a new, short-format cricket tournament is set to launch in Dubai. One that welcomes the world beyond cricket’s established borders.
One that will see the leading players in the game share the dressing room, the new ball, and stories with players from as far afield as Botswana, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda and Bhutan.
We were supposed to have been here before. But where the UAE T20x, a competition designed along similar lines to champion the game’s have-nots alongside its rich and famous, foundered before the stage of even selecting players, the FairBreak Invitational is all set for launch.
On Wednesday night, two sets of players who have only recently met each other will be pitted against each other at the Dubai International Stadium.
The six-team tournament will reach its conclusion at the same ground on May 15. The fare on offer is guaranteed to be something never-before-seen on these shores.
New T20 franchise competitions around the world always say they are going to be unique. They say their one will be different, and jazzy, and exciting.
Then the hired hands are the same guys you saw in a similar tournament in a different venue, in a different country, a month or so earlier. And a month or so before that. Different team names, perhaps. But all packaged in broadly the same way and presented by broadly the same people.
FairBreak, though, has a fair to claim to being unique.
“Within my team, I was chatting to the Nepal captain this morning about captaincy.” So said Heather Knight, whose most recent assignment in cricket was overseeing England’s ultimately doomed attempt to topple the mighty Australia in the World Cup final last month.
Now, she is in Dubai, playing for a team bearing the name of the supporters club more
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