Mcc In Talks Over Abu Dhabi Match

Abu Dhabi has emerged as a potential venue for domestic county cricket’s traditional curtain-raiser to the season after the MCC announced that it was in negotiations to take the game to the United Arab Emirates.

The MCC, which owns the Lord’s cricket ground, has traditionally fielded a select XI to face the winners of the previous year’s county championship at the flagship stadium as the first game of the new season.

However the organisation is considering a plan to play champion county Durham in early April at Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Stadium in a four-day match trialling pink balls.

Emirates Cricket Board chief executive Dilawar Mani stated: ‘We would obviously accommodate them. It would be a great honour for Abu Dhabi to host something like that.’

Playing with pink cricket balls in both one-day internationals and day-night Tests is one of the MCC’s big ideas to shake up the game.

Trials with the pink ball, dyed with a pigment that does not wear off as quickly as with a white ball, began in the winter of 2007-08 and have gradually been stepped up.

The MCC wants to use them under lights in the May 2010 Lord’s Test against Bangladesh, in what could be cricket’s first day-night Test.

Lord’s has been hosting the county opener since 1902, with the MCC team generally made up of young players on the fringes of national selection.

However the match has often failed to attract spectators as it is regularly played in cold weather on flat pitches.

Next season it has to be fitted in before 8th April, several weeks before Abu Dhabi – currently hosting the one-day series between Pakistan and New Zealand – encounters extreme heat.

Keith Bradshaw, MCC’s chief executive, stated: ‘We now believe we have a pink ball ready for trialling which will hopefully last beyond 50 overs and behave as a red ball would in Test matches.

‘We were hoping to use it in some of the county matches in the season just gone but weren’t able to do so and we felt there was an opportunity to play in Abu Dhabi, at a beautiful stadium.

‘We believe the match would be a terrific basis to form an opinion of whether day-night Test cricket with a pink ball is possible.

‘We need to look at the logistics, financially, in flying all the players across and we need to have an agreement with the England and Wales Cricket Board. But we are getting a very favourable response from the players.’

A handful of English counties have played pre-season warm-ups in Abu Dhabi and neighbouring grounds in the Emirates for the past three years, and Mani said he was looking forward to them coming again next March.