‘It’s not cricket’: Political divisions cast a growing shadow over the game

In England and across Europe, the sun is setting on an eventful 2025 cricket season. It will be remembered for the visit of India to England for a hard fought, sometimes acrimonious, five-match Test series, which was shared two wins apiece.

The series was immediately followed by the fifth edition of The Hundred, which will be subject to changes previously discussed in this column.

Those who were present at Southampton on Sept. 7 will remember that England scored 304 for three against South Africa, the third highest total yet in international T20s.

The European Cricket Network is looking back in dismay to the loss of funding from the fantasy gaming platform Dream11, which was forced to cease operations overnight as a result of India’s new online gaming legislation.

A much happier group of people are those representing Italian cricket, whose men’s team qualified for the 2026 T20 World Cup in India, upsetting Scotland in the process.

It used to be the case that, after the end of the English cricket season, international attention switched to the other main Test-playing nations, mainly in the southern hemisphere. This year, in a move symbolic of cricket’s changing landscape, the attention has switched to the UAE.

Its role in cricket’s ecosystem has grown significantly since the opening of a stadium in Sharjah in 1982, where the first international matches were staged in April 1984 in the Asia Cup. The stadium then became a regular venue for one-day internationals (ODIs), hosting 198 until 2003. Between 2010 and 2016 it was the home ground for the Afghanistan cricket team’s ODI and first-class matches.

The UAE’s growing commitment and importance to cricket was further illustrated by the opening of the Sheikh Zayed