World Cup is the target, says Saudi coach after winning the ACC Men’s Challenger Cup

RIYADH: High on confidence after winning the ACC Men’s Challenger Cup 2023 in Bangkok last Sunday, the Saudi Arabian national cricket team’s head coach has said the plan is now to qualify for the World Cup, and not just win regional tournaments.

Saudi Arabia won the inaugural edition of the ACC’s tournament after beating Bahrain by 10 wickets in the final, with the men in green maintaining a perfect record of five wins from five matches along the way.

In an exclusive interview with Arab News, Kabir Khan shared the winning strategy and game plan that helped to win Saudi its first-ever international cricket trophy.

"First of all, I would like to thank our federation, the Saudi Arabian Cricket Federation, the Ministry of Sports and the Saudi Olympic Committee for giving us a chance and providing us with the funds and the facilities that we needed to become the champions,” said the coach.

“It took over one year of hard work by the federation, our top officials and the coaching staff to build a team and get it to a level where they could be champions. The main idea was to collect the top talents from all over the Kingdom. We searched for the players and organized a lot of different talent hunts for juniors and seniors, which gave us a lot of players to pick up in the national squad.”

Significant resources were spent in the talent hunt that helped in the selection of the squad and in building the faith in them to be successful.

“And you can see the results now,” said Khan. “But that’s not the end of the day. It’s just the start of a new journey. We are planning to qualify for the World Cups, not just win tournaments.”

Spelling out the plans, and the targets for the team in terms of competitions and rankings, Khan said