Turning the barren desert into a hot spot for ODIs

Khalid Ansari was the boss at the Khaleej Times' office but he and his wife were our close friends. He was fond of partying and we spent many an evening in his posh villa in the upmarket Jumeirah area wining and dining with a motley crowd of his Dubai friends. My wife and I stayed nearby in a three-bedroom villa. It was a sparsely populated area then with select complexes, the rest being sand and the only green patches being the gardens around the villas. It’s different today. Burj Al Arab —voted the world’s most luxurious hotel with 202 state-of-the-art suites — stands in Jumeirah.

UAE boasted of a cricket stadium called the Sharjah Cricket Stadium. It was nowhere near our Wankhede, Chinnaswamy or Eden Gardens but for a cricket-lover like me, it was a pilgrimage of sorts. The stadium was the brainchild of Abdul Rahim Bukhatir who ran a mega business empire in diverse fields such as construction and retail. However, his passion was cricket. It was his dream to transform the desert state into a glamourous venue for international cricket matches. He got Sunil Gavaskar and Madhav Mantri from India and Asif Iqbal from Pakistan involved in his project. A cricket ground on the desert sands looked impossible. Huge loads of top soil were brought in from the subcontinent and a foolproof watering system was set up to keep the grass alive, healthy and green. Simultaneously, he set up Cricketers' Benefit Fund Series ( CBFS ) to honour cricketers of the past and present with benefit purses in recognition of their contributions to the game.

India-Pakistan matches were huge draws — the 16,000 seats sold out well in advance. Wuth the Khaleej Times being the media sponsors, we were allotted a quota in the VIP stands as well as in the general seating section, resulting in many of our clients lining up for complimentary seats. It was our turn now to play the Lebanese game ‘you give me some, I give you some’. The big spenders got first preference in the VIP stands where everyone, from Shammi Kapoor, Vijay Mallya to Dubai’s corporate honchos, soaked in the atmosphere. The matches were ODI but since the stadium did not enjoy the day-night facility, we sat in the blazing desert sun all through the day. But these things didn’t matter while watching the likes of Sunil Gavaskar and Imran Khan. My wife sometimes accompanied me and her eyes often switched from maiden overs to Dubai’s fashionabale maidens, not that I was far behind.

We were present that day when we were about to cheer India’s victory with just one ball to go and Pakistan still needing five runs. India's top seamer Chetan Sharma delivered the last ball and Javed Miandad sent it flying for a mighty six. With sad faces we departed from the stadium. The ground being small it was not very difficult to hit sixes. Fortunately, the likes of Chris Gayle and De Villiers had not yet arrived; otherwise, the ball would have floated over the stadium and hit the moving cars on the streets ouside (much to the annoyance of the car-insurance companies, I'm sure!)

Bukhatir’s right hand man was Qasim Noorani. He devoted his life to cricket. His knowledge of the game and his organisational ability lifted the game in the desert country to great heights. Bukhatir made him President of CBFS. Under him UAE created a world record of hosting 198 international matches between 1984 and 2003.

How Qasim came to join Khaleej Times as the Managing Director is another story I’ll talk about next time. Till then, let’s enjoy all the juicy stories on our chances to retain the World Cup as our first battle is with old rivals Pakistan. Here's wishing that Kohli emulates Miandad’s heroics way back at Sharjah!

The author is a well-known stage personality