PITCHING FOR RECOGNITION IN THE ICC BACKYARD
Indoor cricket’s organisers hope to gain the attention of the International Cricket Council by staging their World Cup on the governing body’s doorstep in Dubai.
Although the ICC appreciate the merits of the indoor format in terms of the development of the game, they have no formal involvement in administering it. The World Indoor Cricket Federation (WICF) is an independent body, based in Australia, where there are around 90 indoor centres and around 180,000 registered players, it opted to bring its main global competition to Insportz, a multi-sports centre in Al Quoz.
As such, a World Cup involving sides from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, England, India, Sri Lanka, UAE, Singapore and Malaysia, will be played 15 minutes away from the ICC’s offices in Dubai Sports City.
Some, but not all, of the sides involved are officially associated with their own country’s cricket board.
WICF president Greg Donnelly hopes the proximity to the governors of the mainstream version of cricket will help their bid for recognition.
“Indoor cricket in Australia has now been absorbed into Cricket Australia, and the fact this has happened has given the sport more credibility and more access to coaching, high performance and umpiring programmes,” Donnelly said. “We are looking to promote the game in this region and hopefully get the attention of the ICC. The Emirates Cricket Board are supporting the event and assisting the teams from the UAE. We were thinking that the UAE is a central region and provides access to a multitude of countries.”