Mohammed Usman plays the innings of a lifetime and UAE cricket can breathe again

Let’s not understate this. Mohammed Usman might have played the most important innings in the history of UAE cricket on Sunday night. The game here is on the point of implosion. If the national team do not make it to the T20 World Cup next year – and they still might not – then what is the point of it all? Why bother with having a professional elite game here? Without a World Cup of some description, what is there to aim for? To play some second-tier one-day internationals that really only provide a minimal opportunity of ever going to the “Big Dance” in that format? Given what has gone on in the game here over the past two weeks, the Emirates Cricket Board must be wondering if professional contracts are such a good idea, anyway. Of the first intake of central contracts that were handed out three years ago, three players are now suspended pending corruption charges, and one more is absent without leave. And one of the most recent intake is also suspended. If the players are found guilty by the ICC, it is likely they will face criminal charges. Make no bones about it, cricket here could not survive besmirching the UAE. Then Usman went and did what he did against Canada on Sunday, and it felt possible to hope again that things might work out OK in the end. Qualification for the World Cup would be a good news story just when it is needed most. If Canada had beaten the UAE with more than eight balls to spare in the final match of the Qualifier group stage, the host nation would have been shuffled down to fifth place in their pool. That would have meant elimination, and their chances of playing in Australia next year extinguished. Seven balls into the match, they had already lost Rohan Mustafa and Chirag Suri, two players who have proved themselves handy in a crisis in the past. Cue Usman, a consistent achiever but definitely one of the background guys in the national team. With the future of the game here hanging by a gossamer thread, the undemonstrative left-hander set about the salvage operation. By the end of it, he had 89 not out, the highest score of his T20 international career, and the second highest by a UAE player in the format. It put the game far enough beyond the Canadians, and UAE were able to breathe again with a 14-run win. “It is my favourite moment as a cricketer,” Usman said. “Before the match, I had a meeting with my skipper [Ahmed Raza], and he said: ‘Your big innings is pending, your big innings is pending’. “I was thinking this might be the time. I got confidence from my skipper, and I felt like I had to [repay his faith]. Luckily, it went my way.” For now, Usman has earned his team little more than a stay of execution. They are not through to Australia yet, not by a long shot. But they do have two chances to make it. If they beat the Netherlands in their next match, at Dubai International Stadium on Tuesday, they will be guaranteed qualification for the World Cup. Lose, and they will have a last-chance playoff against Scotland a day later. “Right now, we are not thinking too far ahead, we are just thinking from game to game,” Usman said. “We have to try to win the next game, only then can we think about the World Cup. But, of course, we are excited.” Raza, who has been playing for his country for more than 12 years now, termed Usman’s knock “one of the best I have seen someone play in a UAE shirt”. The captain also praised his side for progressing to the next phase in spite of all the troubles that have faced them. “Making it through shows the character of the whole dressing room,” Raza said. “We have fought our way through. We didn’t start well, but being able to sit here knowing we are going through to the play-offs, I am a very pleased man. “This was a great win, but there are two more hurdles to cross.”

Mohammed Usman plays the innings of a lifetime and UAE cricket can breathe again

After the trials and tribulations of the previous two weeks, it needed a special knock from a stalwart batsman to keep alive T20 World Cup dreams