How the UAE became the global center of cricket by Adwa Tanaire read by Ramesh Medani. Look at it from the outside on a game night, and it's easy to see why Dubai's International Cricket Stadium is known as the Ring of Fire. Its unique lighting system casts an ethereal glow into the desert sky, but from the inside. The capacity of twenty five thousand fields modest in comparison with the sport's great venues in Underbad one hundred and thirty two thousand, Melbourne one hundred thousand and Kolkata sixty eight thousand. Still, the International Cricket Council, the sport's governing body, will not cavil about capacity. On Sunday afternoon, when the national teams of Indian Pakistan face off in the Ring of Fire for the biggest game in the first round of the eight Nation Champions Trophy, the ICC can be confident it will be one of the most watched contests of the year in any sport. When these two feel rivals duked it out in October twenty twenty three, the game was watched by a TV audience estimated at five hundred million or five times that of the Super Bowl, not that Navjeorge Sharma would have settled for watching it on TV. The forty one year old technology consultant from Rutherford, New Jersey, flew halfway across the world to take in the game in Dubai, earning bragging rights over three cousins who made the shorter trip from Chandigar and Pune in India. It's not just cricket, he says, It's an emotion. Sherman knows exactly what to expect, having last year watched Indian Pakistan face off in New York. The roar of the crowd, the tension in the air, the sheer passion of the fans. It was an experience I'll never forget, he says. I've been itching to relive it ever since. Plenty of others feel the same way. Hotels are starting to fill up, while prices for rooms and flights have also ticked up. Tickets for Sunday's games sold out within an hour of being released online. On the secondary market. Some were selling at upwards of ten times their original price. Restaurants and sports bars around the city are bracing for a crush of fans who don't have tickets with one EA tree advertising individual kabanas complete with sixty five inch screens. A popular chain of movie theaters will show the game on screens around the city. Amid all the excited anticipation, it is easy to forget that this game wasn't meant to be played in Dubai at all. The Champion's trophy is being hosted by Pakistan, but the tournament was cast in jeopardy when India, citing security concerns, said it would not send its team there. Relations between the two countries are fraught at the best of times, and no Indian team has played on Pakistani soil since two thousand and six. The crisis was averted just before Christmas when the United Arab Emirates stepped in to host all of India's games in Dubai. It was a demonstration of the UAE's cloud in a sport that, although beloved by the South Asian expatriates, including those from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, who collectively make up over two thirds of the UAE's population, is played by very few Emerats. The UAE's own team, made up mainly of players of subcontinental origin, is nowhere near strong enough to make the cut for the champions trophy, but that hasn't prevented the country from positioning itself as a vital hub of world cricket over the past several years. This has coincided with a period of growing Amarati influence across sport, business and geopolitics, funded by revenues from a robust economy built on oil and gas exports, and enabled by the labor and skills of those expatriates from South Asia. The cricket push began in the nineteen eighties when Charja, one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, began to host some games for the benefit of its sizable community of Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis. Soon, Dubai and Abu Dhabi joined the action, building on long standing trade and diplomatic links with the countries of the Indian subcontinent. These links have proven useful away from the cricket field too. Four years ago, officials from Abu Dhabi helped broker a peace pact between Indian and Pakistan. Dubai's place in the cricket world was solidified in two thousand and five when the ICC moved its headquarters to Dubai from Monaco in London, the sport's historic home. The move to a famously tax free jurisdiction followed the UK government's refusal to offer incentives to the Cricket Board. Dubai provided the best way forward for the international game, the ICC's then president Ishan Mani said at the time. In twenty twenty one, when the COVID nineteen pandemic threatened another major ICC tournament meant to be held in India, the UAE was a no brainer all alternative. The Indian Premier League, Cricket's most lucrative, franchise based tournament, has also been staged twice in the UAE. Dubai and the UAE more broadly have a long record of engaging with international cricket, says Christian Uregsen, a research fellow at the Baker Institute in Houston who tracks the UAE's growing geopolitical heft. The two thousand and five relocation of the ICC from its traditional headquarters at Lords in London to Dubai was one of the earliest signs of the globalization of the sport in the twenty first century. This gradual build up of the UAE's influence in cricket stands in stark contrast with the splashy efforts of its wealthier neighbors, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to acquire clout in soccer. Doha have forked out billions of dollars to host the twenty twenty FIFA World Cup, Riad will splash out on the twenty thirty four iteration, topping off its already lavish spending to track international stars to play in the Saudi Domestic League. For all that Katar and Saudi Arabia don't have anywhere near the influence in soccer that the UAE has in cricket, but the Saudis are beginning to mount a challenge. The kingdom has sponsored major cricket tournaments in recent years, and Saudi Aramco has extended a partnership with the ICC through twenty twenty seven. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's advisors have expressed an interest in investing five billion dollars in the Indian Premier League, and Jeddah recently hosted the IPL auction, the equivalent of the Draft in American sports. Prince aud Bin Michal al Saud, chairman of the Saudi Arabian Cricket Federation, has also announced plans to build a world class cricket stadium in Jeddah. It is not inconceivable that fans like Sharma will one day travel there to watch India play Pakistan in a major tournament. But on Sunday night, the eyes of the cricketing world will be on Dubai Ring of Fire.

How the UAE became the global center of cricket by Adwa Tanaire read by Ramesh Medani. Look at it from the outside on a game night, and it's easy to see why Dubai's International Cricket Stadium is known as the Ring of Fire. Its unique lighting system casts an ethereal glow into the desert sky, but from the inside. The capacity of twenty five thousand fields modest in comparison with the sport's great venues in Underbad one hundred and thirty two thousand, Melbourne one hundred thousand and Kolkata sixty eight thousand. Still, the International Cricket Council, the sport's governing body, will not cavil about capacity. On Sunday afternoon, when the national teams of Indian Pakistan face off in the Ring of Fire for the biggest game in the first round of the eight Nation Champions Trophy, the ICC can be confident it will be one of the most watched contests of the year in any sport. When these two feel rivals duked it out in October twenty twenty three, the game was watched by a TV audience estimated at five hundred million or five times that of the Super Bowl, not that Navjeorge Sharma would have settled for watching it on TV. The forty one year old technology consultant from Rutherford, New Jersey, flew halfway across the world to take in the game in Dubai, earning bragging rights over three cousins who made the shorter trip from Chandigar and Pune in India. It's not just cricket, he says, It's an emotion. Sherman knows exactly what to expect, having last year watched Indian Pakistan face off in New York. The roar of the crowd, the tension in the air, the sheer passion of the fans. It was an experience I'll never forget, he says. I've been itching to relive it ever since. Plenty of others feel the same way. Hotels are starting to fill up, while prices for rooms and flights have also ticked up. Tickets for Sunday's games sold out within an hour of being released online. On the secondary market. Some were selling at upwards of ten times their original price. Restaurants and sports bars around the city are bracing for a crush of fans who don't have tickets with one EA tree advertising individual kabanas complete with sixty five inch screens. A popular chain of movie theaters will show the game on screens around the city. Amid all the excited anticipation, it is easy to forget that this game wasn't meant to be played in Dubai at all. The Champion's trophy is being hosted by Pakistan, but the tournament was cast in jeopardy when India, citing security concerns, said it would not send its team there. Relations between the two countries are fraught at the best of times, and no Indian team has played on Pakistani soil since two thousand and six. The crisis was averted just before Christmas when the United Arab Emirates stepped in to host all of India's games in Dubai. It was a demonstration of the UAE's cloud in a sport that, although beloved by the South Asian expatriates, including those from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, who collectively make up over two thirds of the UAE's population, is played by very few Emerats. The UAE's own team, made up mainly of players of subcontinental origin, is nowhere near strong enough to make the cut for the champions trophy, but that hasn't prevented the country from positioning itself as a vital hub of world cricket over the past several years. This has coincided with a period of growing Amarati influence across sport, business and geopolitics, funded by revenues from a robust economy built on oil and gas exports, and enabled by the labor and skills of those expatriates from South Asia. The cricket push began in the nineteen eighties when Charja, one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, began to host some games for the benefit of its sizable community of Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis. Soon, Dubai and Abu Dhabi joined the action, building on long standing trade and diplomatic links with the countries of the Indian subcontinent. These links have proven useful away from the cricket field too. Four years ago, officials from Abu Dhabi helped broker a peace pact between Indian and Pakistan. Dubai's place in the cricket world was solidified in two thousand and five when the ICC moved its headquarters to Dubai from Monaco in London, the sport's historic home. The move to a famously tax free jurisdiction followed the UK government's refusal to offer incentives to the Cricket Board. Dubai provided the best way forward for the international game, the ICC's then president Ishan Mani said at the time. In twenty twenty one, when the COVID nineteen pandemic threatened another major ICC tournament meant to be held in India, the UAE was a no brainer all alternative. The Indian Premier League, Cricket's most lucrative, franchise based tournament, has also been staged twice in the UAE. Dubai and the UAE more broadly have a long record of engaging with international cricket, says Christian Uregsen, a research fellow at the Baker Institute in Houston who tracks the UAE's growing geopolitical heft. The two thousand and five relocation of the ICC from its traditional headquarters at Lords in London to Dubai was one of the earliest signs of the globalization of the sport in the twenty first century. This gradual build up of the UAE's influence in cricket stands in stark contrast with the splashy efforts of its wealthier neighbors, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to acquire clout in soccer. Doha have forked out billions of dollars to host the twenty twenty FIFA World Cup, Riad will splash out on the twenty thirty four iteration, topping off its already lavish spending to track international stars to play in the Saudi Domestic League. For all that Katar and Saudi Arabia don't have anywhere near the influence in soccer that the UAE has in cricket, but the Saudis are beginning to mount a challenge. The kingdom has sponsored major cricket tournaments in recent years, and Saudi Aramco has extended a partnership with the ICC through twenty twenty seven. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's advisors have expressed an interest in investing five billion dollars in the Indian Premier League, and Jeddah recently hosted the IPL auction, the equivalent of the Draft in American sports. Prince aud Bin Michal al Saud, chairman of the Saudi Arabian Cricket Federation, has also announced plans to build a world class cricket stadium in Jeddah. It is not inconceivable that fans like Sharma will one day travel there to watch India play Pakistan in a major tournament. But on Sunday night, the eyes of the cricketing world will be on Dubai Ring of Fire.