Vinode Mamchan
in Dubai
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is made up of seven Emirates and once Friday comes, every flat piece of sand is occupied by cricket matches.Friday is a holiday, so Muslims can visit the mosque and perform 'Jummah Salah.'
That normally takes place between 12.30pm to 1.30 pm so before and after this period, the people here focus on cricket.
Men can be seen diving in fields void of grass as the matches are very competitive. David East, the CEO of the United Arab Emirates Cricket Board (UAECB) says that there are over 10,000 active cricketers in these parts. "We are strategically located in terms of getting people who are interested in cricket.
"The population here is about 10 million and of that only one million are native Emiratis. There are probably around 6 million people from cricket loving India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh here and this presents a population that brings a cricket culture to us.
"They are starved for cricket and this is why they used every piece of flat land to play cricket on a Friday especially."
There are four cricket Councils spread over the UAE in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Ajman. They all take responsibility for the game in their region, organising competition and development programme for the youths. They then present their top players for selection to the UAE team that played at the 2015 World Cup and the Asia Cup earlier this year.
East, who played First Class cricket for Essex in the County Championship think that the game is about to reach the next level here. "We are putting the structures in place to bring forward the next cricketer. We have many youths that are playing the game here and this is good. We have sponsors like OSN who are investing in the youth programmes and sponsoring the school's league.
"In any society when you want to get cricket into the fabric, you have to get it into the schools, get the children playing and from there you would always have cricketers coming through for your national teams."
One drawback to the development of the sport here, according to East is the lack of grounds.
"Across the UAE we have hundreds of grounds but there are only about 25 grass grounds. So you don't have leagues like teams playing home and away, as I am accustomed to in England. What you have here is tournament centred around grounds. So the ground comes like a hub and the team plays a number of matches there.
"As resources become available we are looking to have more grass grounds and one of the other ways we are attending to this, is by forging partnerships with other sporting bodies in having cricket clubs at their venues as well. It puts less of a financial burden on us when things like these happen."