UAE Name 15 For Cricket World Cup League 2 Series In Dallas

The UAE squad for the Cricket World Cup League 2 tri-series in Dallas runs to 15 players, with Harpreet Singh Bhatia named captain. The Emirates Cricket Board named the group for four matches against Namibia and the United States at Grand Prairie Stadium. The series opens on 3 October. It closes on 11 October.

Two players receive a first senior call-up. No reserves were listed in the announcement.

The 15 named for Texas

The Emirates Cricket Board listed the squad as follows.

• Harpreet Singh Bhatia (captain)
• Aayan Afzal Khan
• Adeeb Usmani
• Akshdeep Nath
• Ali Naseer
• Ayaan Misbah
• Awais Ali Shah
• Basil Hameed
• Ibrar Ahmed
• Khuzaima Bin Tanveer
• Muhammad Arfan
• Muhammad Shahdad
• Rahul Chopra
• Sohaib Khan
• Tanish Suri

Bhatia has led the UAE in League 2 before. The National reported his appointment as captain for an earlier tri-series in the same competition. Thirteen of the 15 named have played senior international cricket.

Two first call-ups

Ayaan Misbah and Awais Ali Shah are the uncapped pair. The board describes Misbah as a 17-year-old batter and Shah as a left-arm spinner. Neither has played senior international cricket for the UAE.

Four matches across nine days gives the selectors room to use both. The squad carries 15 names for those four fixtures. Rotation is available without a call-up mid-series.

Four matches at Grand Prairie

All four fixtures start at 10:00 local time at the same ground. Grand Prairie Stadium hosted matches at the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2024. The venue is a long way from home. League 2 is played across the countries taking part, and this leg falls to the United States as host.

Two of the four are against Namibia. Two are against the United States. Each is a List A fixture carrying points in the same table.

UAE's position in the table

The ICC reports UAE sit bottom of the League 2 table with eight wins from 28 matches. That is a win rate below three in ten. The table is the side's record across the whole 2023 to 2027 edition.

Points taken in Dallas carry into that count. The competition forms part of the qualification pathway toward the 2027 World Cup cycle, so each fifty-over fixture in it has standing beyond the series.

A full schedule for a small system

League 2 guarantees the UAE List A cricket against comparable opposition. The competition schedules those fixtures years in advance. Four of them inside nine days is a dense block for an associate side.

That is the value of the competition to boards at this level. It supplies fixtures that a bilateral calendar would not otherwise provide. Namibia and the United States face the same problem and the same solution.