Senior NAT Team - General Discussion

[GA-PowerBug]

Alrighty, let's do this thing shall we.

This topic will be used moving forward just for general discussions, updates and our friendlies. I will look to provide a weekly update post in here to keep everyone informed of what the management team have been working on.

I will create a new topic for our Season 51 Tours and to discuss/enjoy those events in there

[GA-PowerBug]

S51 Week 2
Our first week. lots of chatter, lots of initial work was done. First job was to work on selecting our initial squad of 30, which we believe has now been done. The managers of said players all received mail indicating that we have settled on their player(s) in the squad for the time being.

Friendlies
We played two friendlies this week (as will be the case every week). First one was against Sri Lanka on a Hot/Green, the second against Canada on a Sunny/Green. We split the matches 1 and 1. It was good to trial a few things with the players we have at our disposal, Green is probably a pitch we as a squad can work well with, but it's not a favourite of mine personally.

We'd like to congratulate the following players for making their debuts over these two games:
Shaquille Muttalib [35 (39)]
Daoud Kalil [38 (44)]
Shakir Ishaq [5* (4), 3-46]
All with very bright starts as well which is great to see, looking forward to seeing them play more for use in the future

Tours
This week was tour bidding week for the first SOD tour in Week 5. Scotland won the bidding and the pitches are Crumbling, Uneven and Dry with a 09:00 FPT start time for the matches. We've got a fair idea on what our tour 18 will look like at this early stage. Those with players in the 30 can message us if they want to get a heads up prior to next Sunday.

The Future Stars
At this stage no work has been done on the youngsters. I know my assistants are begging to do work on this so it's not far away from the work getting underway. We've identified a few managers to send some correspondence out to just from our generic searches.

Our stance on training is that we will never force or get upset at a manager who chooses to not follow through with any training suggestions we give. Ultimately these players are club players and it's that manager who decides how to train their players. We will offer training suggestions based on what will give them the best chance to one day represent the UAE and then it's over to the club manager. And cheekily remind them that the compensation for tours has upped to $50,000

Week 3 Plans
- Two friendlies scheduled for Wednesday and Saturday
- Pick the tour squad
- Begin the player search for our future NATs.

[GA-PowerBug]

S51 Week 3
Another week down, and another set of good performances leading into the first tour in Week 5. Main tasks involved selecting the tour squad and setting up our future planning/monitoring work.

Friendlies
Firstly, I need to make an apology, and that goes to Hassan Iqbal, who actually made his NAT Friendly debut last week against Canada. He made 18 off 21 batting at number 6 in the victory.

We played Bermuda (Overcast/Green) and Zimbabwe (Overcast/Dry). Won both games pretty convincingly although I'm not sure that Bermuda set orders given they had 3 spinners playing. The Zimbabwe performance however was very promising, pretty much everything went to plan. No new debutants this week.

Tours
We got dealt a pretty rough draw for the tour. Dry, Crumbling, Crumbling, Crumbling, Uneven. Ideally that Uneven would be split in the middle.

Our 18 is as follows:
Liam Duggan (Stafford rangers reborn)
Abu Reda (blackcat)
Ubaid Kedar (Ashburn CC)
Hassan Iqbal (Crni Zmajevi Cricket Club)
Alam Nu'man (High Voltage)
Zaim Jabbar (Birds 2nd XI)
Al Capone (Murder Inc)
Gadil Mukhtar (Birds 2nd XI)
Kamil Salah (Groundfielders)
Ubaid Mahmood (Space Wolves)
Mu'adh Khaleel (jacko's XI)
Shakir Imran (Birds 2nd XI)
Nawfal Shadi (United XI)
Zaid Abbas (High Voltage)
Rais Armanjani (Illawarra Dragons CC)
Ziyad Khoury (Achmid's Soul)
Hud Sam (High Voltage)
Kaliq Fattah (Achmid's Soul)

A special shoutout to quirkyalive who informed that they've got a club player touring for the first time. Nawfal Shadi has been part of the UAE setup for a while now and despite slowly being on the decline at age 31, glad that you bought him just in time to be able to experience a NAT tour out of him

And another congratulations to Hassan Iqbal who will be making his competitive debut on this tour.

The Future Stars
In regards to our approach for this, our groupings will be in regards to ages at the upcoming SOD World Cups. For example the best players who will be 30.00 or less at the time of the S55 WC will make up that group, which essentially is players aged 26.04 or under right now. We will likely send correspondence out to managers once we have completed an age group.

Week 4 Plans
- Friendlies on Wednesday and Saturday
- Prepare plans/begin setting orders for the Week 5 tour

[MOD-quirkilyalive]

A special shoutout to quirkyalive who informed that they've got a club player touring for the first time. Nawfal Shadi has been part of the UAE setup for a while now and despite slowly being on the decline at age 31, glad that you bought him just in time to be able to experience a NAT tour out of him :)

Thanks mate. Hope he has a few good games left in him, he looked like a beast at his prime:)

[MOD-MrMoose]

So just like the Australian Cricket Board IRL, I am aware Nat Selection isn't based off domestic form. However, I thought it'd be fun to look at the domestic form of our touring party and maybe a few who missed the tour boat.

In the New Zealand Twenty20 1.1, Alam Nu'man of High Voltage is third in the leading run scorer for the comp after 4 matches, despite only playing one game. To be fair, that one game produced 160 runs unbeaten off 66 balls.

Over in South Africa One Day 2.2, big FM Nawfal Shadi is coming off a 5fa for United XI against the budgewoi bulldogs.

Liam Duggan takes home the biggest wage of all UAE players, with a $23,876 wage.

Khayri Nasri is the highest rated player with a 70,022 rating.

Asif Mahmoud is my randomly selected UAE player of the moment, a 26 year old being paid $14,226 and notching out huge scores in Cup and Div 4 fixtures.

[GA-PowerBug]

Nice write up Moose

Apologies there’s not been a weekly wrap up yet. Will get to it tonight whilst our first tour match is on!

[Penky]

Best of luck guys!

[GA-PowerBug]

S51 Week 4
A quieter week this one as we prepare for the first tour of the tenure.

Friendlies
Again two friendlies were played, against new Zealand (Windy/Uneven) and Ireland (Humid/Sticky). The first one was very nice, we rolled New Zealand for 149 and things almost went too well. Zaid Abbas took 4-42 which for a medium AR was way more than we ask for from him, I hope he backs it up in the tour week. We strung together a couple of good partnerships and brought it home nicely 5 wickets down with 13 overs spare.

Ireland was looking great until the batting disappointed us. Rolling them for 127 inside 39 overs so our OBB ws only bowled 4 overs total was super super impressive, however we just kept losing wickets in the chase and were rolled for 106. Disappointing to go into the tour with the loss, but it was 4 straight wins prior to that and there's always things to learn from them

Tours
We have been in discussion planning rotations, keeping a keen eye on the weather (pray for seam weather for us!) and setting preliminary orders. Head to the tours topic for discussion on that

The Future Stars
Real life has gotten in the way to put too much in to this in the last week, however it will properly begin over the next fortnight.

Week 5
- OD Tour matches each day will take up all the mental energy
- Prepare a bid (or not) for the T20 tour

[AchmidG]

Was good to see both my spinners make the side, and perform too.

Ziyad Khoury with the best economy rate of all teams within the group and Kaliq Fattah the 3rd best strike rate.

These two also had the two best bowling averages for the UAE team.

Definitely a proud moment

[GA-PowerBug]

Was good to see both my spinners make the side, and perform too.

Ziyad Khoury with the best economy rate of all teams within the group and Kaliq Fattah the 3rd best strike rate.

These two also had the two best bowling averages for the UAE team.

Definitely a proud moment

Yes very very happy with how they performed. Khoury on the Wednesday and Thursday was amazing. Fattah's endurance plop is a little annoying, but I think we will be wanting to utilise him again on the T20 tour.

[GA-PowerBug]

S51 Week 5
The first tour week was run and done, and lots to learn from.

Friendlies
We played England on Saturday. They didn't set orders. I will say no more on the matter.

Tours
We got the seam weather we were after in the end, and the changes in weather didn't impact us too much.

Positives:
- The bowling unit as a whole. Namely the way we managed to almost pull off the win against Bangladesh, the way we turned the screws in that innings was amazing, just one batsman got away from us.
- Reda and Nu'man. Two high powered bats showed how it's done in the early part of the week.

Negative:
- Our lack of AR's. It hurts the batting depth so much when we have to choose between no batting on our bowlers, or sub-par bowling options. Perhaps we got the balance wrong on this tour and should've opted for a bit more batting depth, given we owned the strike bowlers to go for it at the other end.
- Wednesday and Friday batting displays. Yuck. That is all.

Week 6
- Pick a tour squad for the upcoming T20 tour

[AchmidG]

Good luck mate, keep up the good work.

I've really enjoyed watching the UAE team for a while now having had a few players represent.

[GA-PowerBug]

Good luck mate, keep up the good work.

I've really enjoyed watching the UAE team for a while now having had a few players represent.

Thanks The two you do have were good last tour! I think this might be Fattah's last one though, that Endurance is looking worryingly low

[GA-PowerBug]

S51 Weeks 6-7
We hit the halfway mark of the season, and there's another tour heading our way in week 8!

Friendlies
In the last 2 weeks we've played 4 friendlies, and lost 3 of them. West Indies got the win over us twice. Australia we almost beat on a Dry which was an amazing effort (262k to 284k MR), and we got a scratchy win over India.

Congratulations to Rabah Mahfuz who made his international debut in the game against the West Indies. He top scored with a very impressive 55 at the top of the order as well.

Tours
I would firstly like to thank Zaid Abbas for his services to the national team. 23 competitive matches 330 runs and 29 wickets, a very good return for the medium All Rounder.

We have matches this week as follows:
Dry vs New Zealand
Crumbling vs Canada
Dry vs Bermuda
Crumbling vs Bangladesh
Uneven vs India

All chat on that to be continued over here. Whenever there's an opportunity to promote to Div 1 it's exciting, so let's see what we can put together!

The Future
We made some progress on this over the last two weeks. We've put together players who will be 30.00 or under at the time of the Season 57 World Cup, and notified the current managers that their players have made such squad. It consists of 24 players where there's 8 bats, 2 WKs, 2 of each bowling type, and then 4 ARs. If you want to discuss your own player who did or didn't get a message always happy to chat about them. And if in doubt, train fielding. We will be working on the next World Cup, so Season 53, next.

Obvious disclaimer on this is that we won't just be taking under 30's to the World Cup, but it made sense to draw a line at these points as comparing players when there's age by weeks is a lot more difficult.

Week 8
- It's all about the T20 tour

Go the UAE!

PowerBug

[GA-PowerBug]

S51 Week 8
The second tour has been run and won (by us), and now it's time for a stocktake and prepare for the run home.

Friendlies
There were none since the last update. I forgot to schedule one for Saturday, my apologies. The next 3 slots are currently filled out though so more on this next week.

Tours
As previously mentioned here and in the tour topic, we got through the T20 tour with a 4-1 record which topped the table and sealed promotion in to Div 1 for next season. It essentially seals our spot in not just the World Cup in a few weeks, but it will basically require us to 0-10 in the next two tours to miss the next T20 WC.

The last OD tour has been postponed by a week, so that will take place in Week 12. That means it's bidding week this week. Given we're in Div 3 again it will be almost necessary that we promote in this next tour or OD WC qualification will be a struggle.

The Squad
There's been a few changes to the squad. Firstly, the farewells:
Baligh Issa (4 matches)
Kaliq Fattah (7 matches)
We thank both players for their time in the NAT squad and all managers involved with their training to get them to where they ended up.

Jakeem Khoury, Akil Dhul and Jabril Kamal have all joined the squad recently and will be in contention to make touring parties from the next OD tour.

The Future
We've received responses from the majority of managers on the S57 WC watchlist which we put together which is wonderful, everyone already on the right path which is great. Looking forward to seeing how they all pan out.

We've begun our work for the immediate S53 WC watchlist. We want to be as prepared as possible of course, our expectation is that we will still qualify for the next OD WC. This will be the same format with 24 players broken down in the same way, and will be 30.00 or under at the time of the WC. Correspondence on that to begin within the next fortnight.

Week 9
- Decide on whether a tour bid is necessary and if so what pitches.
- S53 WC Watchlist.

Go the UAE

PowerBug