New Year to mark new beginning for UAE cricket
Date
11/24/2015 1:03:46 AM
The New Year will mark a new beginning for UAE cricket with the sport set to enter a professional era.
The Emirates Cricket Board (ECB) on Monday announced that they will hand out central contracts to players and there will also be full-time professional selectors. The ECB said that it would come into effect by January.
"What we will be moving to is central contracts for players. We will also have full-time professional selectors" David East CEO of the ECB said on Monday.
"It is still a work in progress. The selectors will be condensed from a large group to a dedicated group. Once we have professional selectors in place we will go about selecting a pool of players who will be handed out central contracts. We have identified some of them but a final list will be made as we go ahead. We are still working on a few things and over the next couple of weeks we will have a clear picture. It would probably be implemented by January" East added.
The announcements long overdue marks the evolution from being an amateur side to being a professional outfit like other teams in international cricket. And the UAE will become one of the few associate teams to make that transition.
The move comes after the ECB extended its partnership with the ICC Academy and the latter will play a major role in the process.
"We have extended the partnership with the ICC Academy. We are at a rebuilding stage at the moment and the professionalizing journey will hopefully serve us in the future as we aim to become a strong cricketing nation" said East.
UAE coach Aaqib Javed was elated by these decisions.
"It excites me that we will finally have professional players and professional selectors. Over the three-and-a-half years that I have been here I realised how tough it has been. It was impossible to carry on as an amateur team. So these decisions will change the face of cricket in the UAE" said Aaqib.
Will Kitchen general manager ICC Academy and UAE Cricket High Performance Manager said they had looked at other associate countries and felt that it was time to make the move.
"Prior to the World Cup and at the end of the World Cup we were talking about all of our competitors like Ireland Scotland Hong Kong Netherlands and Afghanistan had professional setups. Their development performance and their development system are full-time professional system with full-time players and full-time staff. So we came up with this project" said Kitchen.
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