Senior NAT Team - General Discussion

[Birdmandipper]

Welcome to lion4life to Nat team aswell, another former player returning and a former UAE Nat manager at that

[Birdmandipper]

First tour of the season starts tonight, tough tour with pitches of Dry, Hard and Sticky making bowler choice hard. Thanks to all managers with players selected. 1st up we have West Indies and hopefully we can off to a good start for the tour and the season

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[heppa]

Unlucky this week guys.

[Birdmandipper]

The 1st Senior Tour of the season is done and dusted and overall was a bit disappointing going 2 wins - 3 losses and missing out on promotion. We were a chance for promotion going into the last day but couldn’t quite manage a win

Game 1 vs West Indies - Lost by 47 Runs
It was a terrible start to the week with the WI making 264 batting 1st on a Dry pitch, we just couldn’t take wickets, the batter were brave but never really had a chance

Game 2 vs Canada - Lost by 141 Runs
Things only got worse in game 2 and we were absolutely demolished, not a bad bowling effort in Hard giving up 318 runs but the batters were atrocious being all out for 177

Game 3 vs USA - Won by 7 Wickets
Decent bowling performance on dry getting USA all out for 215 and the batter were in control for the whole innings chase the total comfortably only 3 wickets down after 40 overs

Game 4 vs Zimbabwe- Won by 7 Wickets
Easy win against a mismanaged fatigued Zimbabwe, bowlers were terrific with them all out for 117, batters made light work of the total 3 down in 27 overs

Game 5 vs Bermuda - Lost by 15 Runs
Decisive game against Bermuda with the winner promoting and we fell just short, on a sticky pitch we bowled them out for a decent 159 but the batters just couldn’t get quite get us over the line.

Batter of the Series - R Oohood - 121 Runs at 60.50 from 3 innings
Bowler of the Series - S Ahmad - 9 wickets at 12.22 from 3 matches

[heppa]

In hindsight, would you have done anything differently?

[Birdmandipper]

The only thing I would change would of been touring Naser (RF) In place of one of the RFM which I have done for this upcoming tour

[heppa]

Well done on promoting lads

[Birdmandipper]

The second tour of the season was completed last week and it was a great week for UAE. With similar pitches to the 1st tour only 1 change was made with Nasar coming in. After a slow start losing the 1st match we then won the next 4 matches to finish 2nd in the group earning promotion to Div 2, this is a great achievement considering where the squad was when taking over and will be a massive help in qualifying for the T20 WC next season

[Birdmandipper]

Congrats to Exquisiteblue on winning the NAT election, good luck for the next 2 seasons. Hopefully you can fight towards WC qualification

[heppa]

Congrats to Exquisiteblue on winning the NAT election, good luck for the next 2 seasons. Hopefully you can fight towards WC qualification

Thanks for your work over the past few seasons Bird. I'd like to see you still involved as I am sure you have a good insight into the players & managers coming through the ranks.

Congratulations EB - best of luck for the upcoming tenure.