Papua New Guinea make their presence felt at new 'home' base in Dubai

Indian Premier League cricket, plus the national football teams of China and Syria, might be wholly different entities, but each share something in common. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, all of them had to stage home games in the UAE in recent times.

The latest sports team set to become “hosts” of a competition in Dubai will be the Papua New Guinea cricket team. With Port Moresby deemed unsuitable for the sides to travel because of a low Covid vaccination rate in the country, PNG will be the nominal home team in a tri-series also including Scotland and Oman, starting on Saturday.

The expatriate population of PNG in the UAE might be limited to a mere few. But if the evidence of when they were last here for a Cricket World Cup League 2 tri-series, against UAE and Nepal last month, is anything to go by, their supporters are both voluble and vivid.

“We only have a little community here, but when it comes to sports, man, UAE can hear us,” said Rose Sweetapple, who has lived in Dubai for the past 16 years.

Sweetapple herself is impossible to miss. Getting yourself seen and heard at a match involving the impassioned fans of Nepal is quite a feat, but Sweetapple stole the show when the sides met at the Dubai International Stadium two weeks ago by way of her glamorous headdress.

She made it herself in Dubai, in the style traditional to her home province of Madang on the north coast of PNG, using feathers that she ordered from the internet as well as items sourced in the country.

“The shells are from where I’m from,” she said. “I brought them from the market because when my relatives sell them, they sell for next to nothing, so you have to support them when they do that.

“The little feathers are from roosters, from the