Of all the places where the progress of women in society, and by extension in sport, is seen to be worthy of celebrating, the Middle East does not necessarily rank very highly. Except, perhaps, when it comes to cricket in the UAE.
Their women's team was neither the best-performing Associate over the last year nor did they qualify for the T20 World Cup, but they were given the Associate Women's Performance of the Year award in the ICC's Development Awards for 2023 for their stellar run through the T20 World Cup Asia Qualifier. They also show immense potential for the future.
Theirs is a system that is now made up of largely local-born players who are being introduced to the game through a highly professionalised academy system and encouraged to play sport by a generation of parents who understand the importance of physical activity for both genders.
"It's become the norm growing up. Parents usually take their kids to all different kinds of sports and then they allow themto pick one over the other," Ahmed Raza, the former UAE men's captain and now women's coach, told the ESPNcricinfo Powerplay podcast.
One of those children was Esha Oza, the current UAE women's team captain. She was eight months old when her family moved to the Emirates from Mumbai in 1998 and she calls the UAE home. She played football at school and discovered cricket during her summer holidays in India, where her cousins played the popular gully version of the sport. "I used to go play with them and I realised I actually enjoy doing this," she said. "When I returned to Dubai [after the holidays] in 2013, that was when I thought maybe I should start learning the sport as well, go to an academy and play the sport."
Oza was 15 years old at the time, but she already had a good understanding of team sport and the requisite fitness to play competitive games. She joined the Desert Cubs Academy, where she played mostly with boys but stood out as a strong opening batter and handy offspinner.
A year later she found herself in the national side for a Gulf Cricket Cup (GCC) tournament in "a team made up of schoolgirls", and had football to thank for some of her successful rise.
"Football is also a team sport, so just being around a team, being around that environment, that's really important," she said. "You learn a lot through sports. It teaches you how to deal with a lot of things, be it wins, losses, sharing stuff, talking to different people. That's something that's common across all sports. And you're already active if you're playing another sport, so it's easy to transition from one sport to another."
When UAE played their first official T20I in 2018, Oza was part of the XI and by that stage was also part of an ICC Development Squad that played in England. Within six months she had scored her first half-century - against China - and her career was on the rise.
By then she was 20 and close to the end of her tertiary studies, which is the age at which Raza says most young women are lost to sport. "The challenge comes when they cross the school and university age, where they have to step into the real world and get a job or get married. The challenge for me, or the board, is to keep them in the system," he said.
Fortunately for Oza, she had both a plan and the right combination of circumstances to help her. In the summer of 2019, she decided to spend an extended period in Mumbai to try to make the domestic Under-23 side there.
The experience itself was more challenging than anything she'd known before. "For the trials, there were more than 5000 girls. Then, it was about getting to the later stages, the top 100 and the last 30 for the camp. That was the first part of the challenge, getting there and making it through these stages," she said.
She succeeded in earning a place at the Mumbai Cricket Association's indoor summer camp, which ran for a month, and then the Mumbai senior squad for T20s. "It was a great challenge," she said. "We had Jemimah Rodrigues playing for Mumbai and she led us in a game. I played against many of the current Indian players as well, and just watching their game, how different it is compared to ours, you can learn a lot from that."
All the while she was studying towards a bachelor of commerce and management degree from the University of Wollongong. It could all have become too much, but then came Covid-19 and things moved online. "So even though I was in India, I was able to catch up with my classes," Oza said. "I didn't miss out on much. I was just trying to balance both things."
Though the UAE did not play any matches between February 2019 and November 2021, she was able to keep her skills sharp, and within four months of returning to international cricket, she notched up the third-highest individual score in the format by any female cricketer. Her 158 not out against Bahrain was also her first century and the magnitude of the achievement took her by surprise. "That was the first time I scored a hundred, and I crossed the 150 mark as well, so I was a bit confused. How do you celebrate when you get 150?"
So how did she? "I just put my bat up. I didn't know what else to do!"
She has since added two more centuries to her record, is the second fastest woman to 1000 T20I runs, has played in all but four of the UAE's matches, and now also captains the national side.
As captain, her T20I average has gone up to 40.84 (compared with 30.95 overall) and she spearheaded the team's unbeaten campaign at the Asia Qualifiers, which saw them advance to the T20 World Cup Qualifier, where they were in the running to make the line-up for the tournament, until they lost to Sri Lanka. The defeat only made Oza want to get to the event even more.
"I really badly wanted to make it to this year's World Cup," she said. "But every team wants it. Every team playing the qualifiers has the same goal. The World Cup is the biggest event in the globe for cricketers and I just want to take the team to one, hopefully the 2026 World Cup."
The 2026 tournament is a slightly expanded version of the competition, with 12 teams instead of ten, and UAE believe they can get there. But along the way, they have other goals. "Becoming one of the best Associate countries in the world is a goal that we are working towards," Raza said. "And getting ODI status. Those are the things that are on our radar."
Currently, all the Full Member women's teams have ODI status and five Associates - Netherlands, Scotland, Papua New Guinea, Thailand and USA - were awarded ODI recognition in 2022. There does not appear to be any set criteria for awarding ODI status to women's teams, apart from an upward trajectory in results, and on that front UAE tick the box. This year, they have won eight out of 11 matches, the best in any year where they have played more than five games, and they can improve on that record at the Asia Cup. They are grouped with giants India and Pakistan but also with Nepal, who are ranked five places below them. "When you play the Asian giants like India, you know there are a lot of eyeballs on you," Raza said.
Oza knows that first-hand from the valiant 66 she scored in the T20 World Cup Qualifier against Sri Lanka, which saw her finish as the tournament's second-highest run-scorer behind Chamari Athapaththu. "It was talked about around the globe," Raza said, and though Oza is obviously the team's superstar, he believes there can be others. "Any of our players can have a knock like that or a bowler can have a good spell. And it's T20 cricket. You never know. You roll one of those big teams over and the whole world will be talking about you."
Another example is the UAE's Chennai-born legspinner, Vaishnave Mahesh. She took 15 wickets at the Asia Qualifier and, at 16 years and 262 days at the time, became the youngest player to get 50 T20I wickets, taking the mantle from Rashid Khan, who was 19 when he reached the milestone. Mahesh was only 12 when she debuted for UAE, and though players of that age can no longer play international cricket after the ICC imposed a minimum age of 15 in 2020, it's in that mid-teens age group that the UAE will find their next generation. "Our development programme has hundreds of girls who are under the age of 15 who will be coming through our system," Raza said.
His next task is figuring out ways to keep them in the system and there's no better person to serve as a role model than Oza. "We're seeing a lot more girls taking part in cricket in the UAE as well," she said. "We see ten-year-olds coming and saying that they've watched us play. They're watching the UAE women's team play. That means even they're keeping their eyes on what's happening.
"Girls growing up now can have a goal: I want to play for the UAE team in the future. That's how they can start their journey. They can go to academies and say, 'In a few years' time, I want to be a player for the UAE women's team.'"
Listen to the full interview with Esha Oza and Ahmed Raza on ESPNcricinfo Powerplay on July 17