INTERVIEW
Follow UsOver the last 40 years, cricket has seen exponential growth in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where it has gone from just being at a corporate level as a recreational sport to an industry that thrives.
While the culture of club cricket has always been prevalent, the rise in the number of individuals taking up the sport professionally has meant that the UAE has also become the hub for global events. This growth of the sport has indeed been the driving force behind - T10, a ten-over competition that has ruled the roost since 2017.
The fast-paced format, which sees teams play 60 deliveries each, has gone from a new concept to a foolproof concept for the future. Abu Dhabi was the first place this format was born, and hasn’t looked back since.
Cricket.com got the opportunity to talk to Abu Dhabi Cricket & Sports Hub’s CEO, Matthew Boucher, and Chairman of T10 Sports Management, Shaji Ul Mulk, about the growth of the sport in the Middle East. We also got to talk about the direction of T10 cricket from here on.
Here’s the full transcript of the interview:
So, Mr Boucher, where did the partnership with Shaji Ul Mulk, Chairman of T10 Sports Management, start for you?
Boucher: An opportunity came to move to Abu Dhabi Cricket Club at that time, which is now rebranded as Abu Dhabi Cricket and Sports Hub. So, that was the middle of 2019, and one of our first objectives, I think, or part of that new mission with the Abu Dhabi Sports Council and His Excellency Aref Al Awani, taking over the cricket club at the time, was to find and procure a regular annual sports event, a cricketing event for Abu Dhabi.
That's the start of the relationship with T-10 Global and Shaji, where we developed a relationship starting in 2019 to 2023, and we've just renewed that for another five years. So yeah, I've always been passionate about sport and been very lucky to continue events, but create conceptualise and innovate in line with the UAE itself being a very young country. So, we didn't have much to start with, and the portfolio is what it is now because of so many brilliant people and so many fantastic government and strategic departments.
Now, Shaji, we have to ask you about the growth of cricket in the Emirates. Could you just trace the journey for us?
Shaji: If you ask me about the journey, it's a 40-year journey, really, as far as I'm concerned. There was this culture of club cricket in the UAE. That has been the seed to where UAE cricket is today. So, the corporates started employing professional cricketers.
And then we, as an enterprise, were one of the first companies to start turning those into professional cricketers as well, which means we were giving jobs for the whole team just to play cricket. None of them needed to come to work. And then that's where the contribution started.
But otherwise, the UAE has been fantastic. We just had one stadium before, the Sharjah Cricket Stadium, where we played all international cricket. Then came the Abu Dhabi Stadium and also the Dubai around the same time, plus or minus a few years.
The infrastructure where we are today is probably one of the best in the world. Both from the infrastructure perspective and also from the national team itself, which has played the World Cup twice and qualified for the Asia Cup, cricket in the UAE has become quite a hub.
And where did the concept of T10 cricket come from? Quite an interesting concept
Shaji: T10's launch in the UAE was the perfect time, so that's where we started. As you can see, T10 has grown to be a global property right now.
The idea started from cricket’s own evolution, isn't it? Cricket evolved from five days to one day to T20. And as any sport in the world is looking for new viewership, the age generation gap and the attention span is getting shorter and shorter.
So even if you see, unless it's a highly intense match, I don't think anybody actually sits through in front of a television for a full T20 match. Right. So that's a reality. Now, again, if you compare the world sports, the biggest sports in the world are football or volleyball. They are the 90-minute, 100-minute games. So that is the whole rationale.
We wanted to bring cricket to those levels and ensure that the intensity of the viewership stays focused on the game. So that's where it started. And then, having said the T10 all over the world, we actually have the IP for the brand name T10.
Could you talk about how that T10 format is now spreading its wings to different countries?
Shaji: That's a trademark name [T10]. It's pleasing to see that many countries and organisations are actually adopting what we've started. As the format grows, cricket becomes more popular, and new countries are also adopting it.
Right. Now, we're looking at the U.S. market. The popular belief is that this format is more likely to succeed in newly developing countries. We want to take up cricket. Japan is talking about cricket. China is talking about cricket.
This format will certainly appeal to them. The journey has been pretty exciting. And the way we see the T10 as a format, growth has been quite exponential.
Okay, this leads me to the important question: what is being done to develop the sport from a grassroots level?
Boucher: Yeah, absolutely. We've got over 400 kids registered in the academy. And they're all living and breathing T10 on a monthly basis.
They go to the games. They're involved in the games. So, from the junior level, seeing T10 international players on their doorstep is absolutely incredible and invaluable. We are doing a couple of new junior tournaments for next year, a junior T10 that will be both Abu Dhabi-based and in the wider UAE base.
So that will promote the event and the kids coming through. And then, obviously, together with Shaji's team at T10 Global, there's free ticketing for kids while we attend the event. They are at the absolute heart of everything we do for junior and community enrichment.
A ten-team competition, could you just talk about that move and are there plans to grow it even more?
Shaji: The T10 with 10 teams is probably the right format for the leagues to grow. But Abu Dhabi has just been the starting league, and it's grown and become the catalyst for all the other leagues. So it has grown to the extent that we want to do.
So, I really would like to stay at 10 teams as far as T10 is concerned. And the growth is actually global because now we've done four. We are looking forward to doing something in India next year and then, you know, keep growing each year in terms of making T10 a truly global property.
It's very encouraging that the full-member boards are now actually adopting. Two have already been adopted: the Sri Lanka Cricket Board and the Zimbabwe Cricket Board. The West Indies Cricket Board is very seriously talking to us.
Are there plans in the future to make this into a full-fledged multilateral series between these sides?
Shaji: Of course, we are also discussing bilaterals with them, so there’s a good chance you can see a T10 bilateral or multilateral tournament between West Indies, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and the UAE.
So that's how we want to continue to grow the format. The more full member boards and major broadcasters like Star Sports join us, the more all T10 leagues around the world will grow. This is part of our growth strategy, and we plan to continue expanding in this direction.
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