UAE captain Mohammad Tauqir admitted his side paid a big price for complacency and poor batting as they failed to qualify for next year’s World Twenty20 competition.
Having reached the 2014 World Twenty20 in Bangladesh and this year’s 50-over World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, the UAE would have fancied their chances of playing in their third straight ICC event.
Instead, they struggled on the UK pitches and ended their Group B qualifying campaign with just three points after yesterday’s final match against Oman was abandoned without a single ball bowled due to a wet outfield in Stirling, Scotland.
It capped a disappointing tournament for the UAE, who were already eliminated prior to the Oman game after suffering their fourth defeat of the group against Kenya on Wednesday.
“When we entered the competition, I felt we were a bit complacent. We were under the tag of having qualified for the 50-over World Cup and the 2014 World Twenty20,” said Tauqir.
“Maybe we didn’t prepare very well but overall it was a good learning experience against the opposition. We need to go back, improve individually and as players and do well in the future games.
“If we had qualified, we would have reached next year’s World Twenty20. But now we just have to look over things, at what went wrong, and do well in the
domestic season as I don’t think there will be many opportunities to play international T20 cricket this year.”
After a truly remarkable morning at #wt20q out, focus turns to #HKvNEP & #KENvUAE All LIVE on http://t.co/HOlNssaipe pic.twitter.com/h1BtthADNZ
— ICC (@ICC) July 15, 2015
The UAE’s highest score was 164 in their eight-wicket defeat to Afghanistan, with only Shaiman Anwar (101) and Mohammad Shahzad (126) finishing the campaign in triple figures. The skipper made no secret which factor played a big part in his team’s exit.
“I would say the biggest failure in this tournament is our batting,” he said. “In our only win against Canada, we chased that 133 target against very mediocre bowling.
Against Kenya, it was mediocre bowling and we couldn’t chase 145 plus, so I would blame the batting. Apart from the Afghanistan game where we scored 168, in any other game we didn’t cross 140.”
He added: “The batsmen must take more responsibility. We just didn’t execute our plans. But our bowlers were decent. I wouldn’t say it was excellent bowling but restricting teams to 130-140 was a decent effort by them.”
Oman v UAE at Stirling is abandoned following a huge amount of rain overnight leaving the ground unplayable #wt20q pic.twitter.com/QlmIxc3lnO
— ICC (@ICC) July 17, 2015
All-rounder Shahzad was the only UAE batsman to score a half-century during the six games, while fast-bowler Mohammad Naveed topped his team’s tally with four wickets.
And 43-year-old spinner Tauqir feels no player stood out from the rest.
“I didn’t see any star performance by anyone. When I look back at the whole tournament, it was a very disappointing performance as a team. We are much better than what we have performed,” he said.
