There isn’t a whole lot of buzz around Dubai and Sharjah just yet, but seldom has the field looked so even ahead of a major women’s tournament
Shashank Kishore01-Oct-202415:17
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“What happens in Dubai Sports City stays in…….” doesn’t quite have the same appeal as “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”, does it?That unmistakable sentiment rings out loud around this township, because nothing that happens here, except when the men’s teams of India and Pakistan occasionally meet, causes ripples of excitement around town.The robust Dubai metro hasn’t yet spread its wings this far, so is it even in Dubai, they ask. Jokes aside, there’s an unusual sense of calm around the venues.If you’re expecting fanfare and hoopla around the stadiums as a marker of the buzz around the Women’s T20 World Cup, you may need to temper your expectations. The ICC certainly has.Related
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An example of that is simply how affordable the tickets are; they start at AED 5 (USD 1.36 approx) for regular seating, while the premium seats start at AED 350 (USD 95 approx). The same area for a men’s India-Pakistan game at the 2021 Men’s T20 World Cup cost upwards of AED 6000 (USD 1600 approx).Getting your hands on tickets may have meant hours of queuing up virtually, staying connected through every possible device you own, only to be told your payment failed because the server crashed, before you find the friendly neighbor posting an Instagram story of how a friend’s uncle’s colleague helped arranging passes.For the record, while the hospitality tickets for India-Pakistan on October 6 in Dubai have been sold out, general seating is available in plenty, as are tickets for most other big games.India have been training with balls soaked in soap solution to try and prepare for dew•ICC/Getty ImagesWhile the last-minute shift of venue from Bangladesh wasn’t ideal, and is among the reasons for the low-key build-up, there couldn’t have been a better alternative than the plug-and-play possibilities the UAE offers.Yes, it won’t quite match the pulse of a sellout Sylhet crowd dancing to the beats of (the theme song of the last Women’s T20 World Cup Bangladesh hosted in 2014), but it could yet produce compelling cricket because all the teams are about to embrace the unknown.And this perhaps, entirely by chance, could be the ICC’s cheat code to unlocking the closest-ever women’s tournament in recent memory, because no team can claim to have mastered the conditions. Picture this: none of the competing teams have ever played at the Dubai International Stadium.Acclimatising to the heat and humidity isn’t unusual for professionals anymore; what is a slight deviation from the norm is the lengths teams are going to in their preparation.England have camped in Abu Dhabi for over two weeks, training at different times of the day, including the dead of the afternoon, to tune their bodies, coming from nippy weather back home. Pakistan have played in 40-degree heat in Multan against South Africa and have continued from where they left off. Scotland and West Indies scheduled unofficial games to get used to the heat factor, long before the warm-ups.Given the advantage chasing sides are likely to have in Dubai, teams batting first may need to go hard from ball one•ICC/Getty ImagesIndia have had unusually long fielding drills to get used to the low, ‘ring of fire’ lights around the stadium. On their first training day upon arrival, the local organisers were taken aback by a rather strange request. “Lots of soap water, please” was the message. To wet the ball. They could have used plain water, but India wanted the slippery effect of soap to help their spinners simulate bowling in dewy conditions.History suggests dew could be a massive factor. In the 2021 Men’s T20 World Cup, all 10 night games in Dubai were won by the chasing team. So, teams are trying to go hard from the first ball, to be able to give their bowlers, to quote MS Dhoni’s famous term, “par-plus scores.” Jemimah Rodrigues has certainly bought into that mindset. Shafali Varma, Chamari Athapaththu, Alyssa Healy and Deandra Dottin probably know no other way.And the exact opposite of what Dubai offers is likely to spring up in Sharjah. The South African men being spun out by Afghanistan on slow burners could have just been a teaser of what could follow at this tournament. It could bring out a different facet of T20 bating.The tournament as a whole has grown, as has the following, as a result of this transformation of skills in the women’s game. This has led to a massive spike in interest which wasn’t there even 10 years ago, because only the knockout games were deemed important enough to televise.The group-stage fixtures were a distant second cousin to the men’s tournament happening in parallel at A-list centers. But six years since opening up the experiment of a standalone tournament, the sport grew exponentially that March day in 2020 – raging pandemic notwithstanding – when 86,174 spectators played a massive part in spurring a revolution.Four years on, the women’s game has grown even bigger, with a greater number of dangerous teams, and endless possibilities await in what could yet be the closest-ever Women’s T20 World Cup.