To the "Lamps of Samarqand" ?

Around the end of the first millennium of the modern era, there was this place in the middle of the desert in Central Asia that was the hub of all land-based Old World trade from the Far East to the European West. Reaching it meant thousands of miles of travel by camel caravan, whether from Eastern Europe or North India, from Persia or Peking. Yet many intrepid traders would make the trip, lured by the appeal of exotic commodities which were in high demand at home. Glimpsing the "lamps of Samarqand" even once in one's lifetime was the goal of many an adventurer as well - Marco Polo was only the best-known of this ilk, although it was his trip that that made the place famous.

Fast forward to the end of the second millennium and to world cricket, and we have a new Samarqand. It is far away from the major cricketing centres of world population, and is an oasis in its own cultural desert-- created out of the quixotic mind of a cricket-loving Arab sheikh, as a way to indulge his royal eccentricity. And yet, over the past few decades, it has grown into a place to which many of the best cricketers in the world have made their pilgrimages, and played each other far from the madding crowds and jingoistic cheers of "home"-- a very pure kind of "cricket for cricket's sake", with little at stake except pride and prize money.

Playing at Sharjah is the secret desire of many international cricketers, especially those who are trying to make an impression on the world cricket stage--to them, it is a sort of cricketing Mecca, without the religious connotations.

It appears that the USA, through a combination of serendipitous circumstances, is to be allowed a fleeting glimpse of the "lamps of Samarqand" - and thus make its own kind of history.

It started with ICC's plans for holding the second Six Nations Challenge Tournament at Sharjah.

The first Six Nations Challenge Tournament had been held in Namibia, and had included "A" teams from a few major countries to flesh out the field. The second Six Nations Challenge tournament to take place in Sharjah from February 29 to March 6, 2004, has meant a drastic change in format as well as location. This time, the focus was to be on the top six non-Test playing countries-- Kenya, Holland, Namibia, Scotland, UAE and Canada. The winner of the Six Nations Challenge tournament was guaranteed a place in the Champions Trophy Tournament between the major countries in England in late 2004 - an incentive that did not exist the first time the Six Nations tournament had been held.

However, a problem arose with Kenya. It appears that Kenya (which had won the inaugural Six Nations Tournament in 2002 in Namibia), had chosen not to participate-- it was to be touring West Indies at the time, and had already been pencilled into the Champions Trophy along with the Test-playing nations. Since one of the avowed aims of the Six Nations Challenge was to identify a team to play in the Challenger Trophy, Kenya's participation would have been superfluous - and redundant.

It seems that the ICC had thought of USA or Ireland to plug the hole in the Six Nations Tournament. The USA had defeated Ireland in the 2001 ICC Trophy in Toronto in an unexpectedly exciting match, and would have to be given the nod if performance alone was to count. So, giving less than a month's notice, the ICC invited USACA to send a US team to Sharjah, making it clear that Ireland was to be given the nod if USA could not participate. The USACA accepted promptly, and the USA found itself facing its stiffest international challenge in years, in Sharjah in 2004.

How the news got out to the US public is a story in itself, and says a lot about US cricket politics.

It all started with a rumour floated anonymously in the USCRICKET open forum, that the USA might be invited to play in Sharjah. The first reaction was scepticism; it was opined that there had been many such rumours in recent months, some even involving fraud and subterfuge, and this was more of the same. Then, a copy of a private e-mail from ICC to USACA extending the invitation to Sharjah showed up in (of all places) a Caribbean Web site, was copied to the USCRICKET Forum, and was greeted by a second crescendo of comment alleging that the letter was a hoax.

I took the liberty of contacting ICC directly, and was assured that the letter was not a hoax. The word was duly passed on to the cognoscenti. It was only at this ultimate stage, faced with a barrage of inquiries, that the USACA acknowledged that, yes, it had received an invitation and yes, it had accepted. Why the USACA did not reveal the invitation sooner, and thereby avoided much of the fuss and paranoia, is a question for the ages - could it just be that the USACA enjoys Byzantine intrigue, or is it too afraid to let people know what it is doing? Who knows.

And now, a controversy has developed over what kind of USA team to send to Sharjah.

On one side are advocates of a promising team of youngsters who could be "blooded" by the Sharjah experience and gain the maturity and practice needed for the 2005 ICC Trophy. If the idea was to develop a team for the 2007 and the 2011 World Cups, it was argued, the players selected would need to be under 25 to last the course - anyone older would simply not be playing that long.

On the other, it is argued that USA needs to go with the "veterans", most in their late 30s or 40s, who have played first-class cricket and could better deal with the challenges and rigours of competitive international cricket. These are the people who have given the USA whatever credibilty it now enjoys after winning the Americas 2002 Championship and defeating its arch-rivals, the Cayman Islanders, and they are in the best position to add to those accomplishments.

There are also centrists who argue for a blend of youth and experience, the proportions depending on which way they lean between the two extremes. One thing no one speaks of is of inviting mainstream Americans - the "true-blue all-American yokels", as one person put it on the lively, sometimes scurrilous, USCRICKET "open" bulletin board - to play on a USA Sharjah team. It is recognized that the sport has to appeal to born-and-bred Americans to secure a long-term foothold in this country, but it is universally accepted that Sharjah 2003 is neither the place nor the time to try.

Complicating the picture is a general distrust of the USACA Selection Committee, which has been accused in the past (fairly or unfairly) of bias, parochialism, and ineptitude - a lot will depend on how fairly and efficiently it performs this immediate task of selecting the sojourners for the pilgrimage for Sharjah.