Sports
World Cup 2022: British officers sent to the tournament will act as ‘buffers’ between fans and local police
British police officers deployed in Qatar for the World Cup will act as “cultural interpreters” between fans and local law enforcement, says Chief Constable Mark Roberts.Roberts, the national lead on football policing, said British police are not there to tell fans how to behave.
“The focus is to try and prevent unfortunate misunderstandings where fans inadvertently cause offence,” he said.
The World Cup starts on 20 November.Those “unfortunate misunderstandings” could stem from fans drinking alcohol, taking shirts off, waving flags, gathering in large numbers and other stereotypes that come with football fan culture.The UK police delegation includes a team of 15 engagement officers, who will act as a “buffer” between supporters and Qatari law enforcement.
“We’re really keen that the British officers who go are a buffer and cultural interpreter so that we can have the first conversation with our fans before anyone else is deployed,” added Roberts.
“Their primary focus is to liaise with the supporters and the police forces just to say ‘look we’re not saying you’re wrong, but it’s causing offence so you might want to moderate your behaviour before anyone else has to intervene’.”
Around 3,000 to 4,000 England fans are expected to travel to Qatar for the group stages, with numbers set to increase should Gareth Southgate’s side reach the knockout stages. An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 Wales fans also expected to fly out to the tournament, which concludes on 18 December.
“We’re not there to tell people how to behave, we don’t have powers, we’re not there to enforce local laws,” Roberts said.
“What we are there to do is have a conversation with supporters. We’re not going to lecture the fans on their behaviour – the advice would be to be a good guest.
“Our officers are there and if we do think there’s any problems we’ll look to intervene at a lower level and make sure that everyone stays safe.
A “significant” number of UK police officers will be on the ground acting as spotters to gather information to feed back to the Qatari commanders and act as community officers to support fans.
Turkey will send more than 3,000 riot police to Qatar as part of the security operation for the tournament. There will also be 100 special operations police sent from Turkey to Qatar, along with 50 bomb specialists and 80 sniffer dogs and riot dogs.Last month Pakistan’s cabinet approved a draft agreement allowing the government to offer troops for security at the tournament. It did not say how many personnel would be sent, and neither country has said that a final agreement has been reached.
“There may be perceptions on the part of the Qatari police or the supporting Turkish police, or any of the other agencies, about what supporters are doing,” added Roberts.
“Just because people are noisy, bouncing up and down and chanting in a different language does not mean they’re being aggressive.”
Statistics provided by the police show there were three arrests among more than 5,000 England fans who travelled to Russia for the 2018 World Cup, 15 arrests four years earlier in Brazil where more than 9,000 fans travelled, and seven arrests from more than 14,000 fans at South Africa in 2010.
Roberts said: “You can see from the stats of previous World Cups, when people have to go to that effort and expense to get there, generally fans are going to go, watch the games and enjoy them.”
The Fifa event will be taking place in a Muslim country in the Middle East for the first time, and the consumption of alcohol is prohibited in Islam.Fans will only be permitted to drink in the designated fan areas, one of which is a fan park which can hold up to 40,000 people and will show matches on big screens.
The other is a paid ticket event with DJ’s which may not attract fans in numbers as the cheapest tickets are said to start from £75.Ashley Brown from the Football Supporters Association (FSA) said many fans have been “priced out” of the World Cup with concerns also around the lack of accommodation available to supporters.
“There’s a combination of reasons why people are being deterred,” Brown said.
“For a lot of people Qatar doesn’t sound like an exciting place to go, it’s not a typical holiday destination, lack of alcohol availability, cost of getting there, cost when you’re there, it’s put a lot of people off.”
The World Cup is expected to attract more than one million visitors, but by March Qatar only had 30,000 hotel rooms, 80% of which had already been booked by Fifa for football teams, officials, and sponsors.
Organisers are offering shared rooms in empty apartments, villas, fan villages and traditional-style tents in the desert with two cruise ships being converted into floating hotels that will be moored at Doha’s port.Some fans are even opting to travel in from neighbouring Emirates country Dubai.Another point of contention for travelling fans has been the fact that homosexuality is illegal in Qatar and many gay fans have opted to boycott the tournament.
“It’s very sad,” said Brown. “Three Lions Pride who represent that community as travelling England fans – I don’t think any are going.
“They don’t feel safe, they don’t feel comfortable and they don’t feel reassured and that is incredibly disappointing that Fifa can put a tournament in a country that won’t welcome those people.”
(BBC Sports)
Tilak Varma (c), Priyansh Arya, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Riyan Parag (vc), Ayush Badoni, Nishant Sindhu, Harsh Dubey, Suryansh Shedge, Prabhsimran Singh (wk), Kumar Kushagra (wk), Vipraj Nigam, Yash Thakur, Yudhvir Singh, Anshul Kamboj, Arshad Khan
Saudi Arabia is set to host its first franchise league later this year, with the ‘Dunes League T20’ due to launch in October. The league has been sanctioned by the Saudi Arabia Cricket Federation (SACF) and is expected to feature players who have recently retired from international cricket but remain active on the franchise circuit.
Saudi Arabia has been a major disruptor in the sporting world over the last five years as the oil-rich kingdom looks to diversify its economy, staging lucrative football, tennis and boxing events. The nation’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) also launched the breakaway LIV Golf tour, though has recently announced that it will withdraw funding at the end of this season.
There have been widespread rumours over the last three years that Saudi Arabia would disrupt cricket by launching a T20 league to rival the IPL, with further speculation last year about potential investment in a ‘Grand Slam-style’ circuit of T20 leagues floated by the Australian Cricketers’ Association.
In practice, Arabia’s entry into the cricketing world has been gradual, via sponsorship deals with the ICC and staging the IPL auction in 2024. The SACF also partnered with the UAE’s ILT20 last year, and has signed a long-term agreement to stage the FairBreak Women’s T20 Challenge, though the first edition has been postponed due to conflict in the Gulf region.
The six-team Dunes T20 League is planned to launch in October with matches played in Taif, near Jeddah. It has been developed in partnership with the Sports Asian Network and two talent agencies: Unique Sports Group, whose clients include Jofra Archer, and Prolithic, who manage Abhishek Sharma. Prolithic’s Yuvraj Singh will act as the league’s ambassador.
The SACF initially announced provisional plans for the league late last year and said that it was designed to put Saudi Arabia “on the global cricket map” and “develop Saudi talent”.
The league is expected to feature a maximum of four players who have played full-member international cricket in the last two years, thereby falling under the threshold that demands approval from the ICC. Top salaries could reach USD 100,000.
[Cricinfo]
After back-to-back ducks in his last two innings, Virat Kohli showed most emphatically that he had merely been out of runs and not out of form, scoring his ninth IPL hundred to lead Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) to the top of the IPL 2026 table with a commanding win over Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in Raipur.
Kohli’s unbeaten 60-ball 105 was a vintage effort in a run-chase – smooth, controlled, and full of both relentless sprinting between the wickets and gorgeous strokeplay, particularly at either end of his innings. That he never seemed stretched, however, was perhaps the story of the match – it may have been decided by the relative quality of the bowling attacks, particularly the seamers.
RCB’s bowlers did a superb job to keep KKR down to below 200 even though they only lost four wickets, and KKR’s inexperienced seam attack simply couldn’t match them for discipline and ability to extract misbehaviour from a slightly two-paced surface – with the caveat that it may have eased up a little during the second innings.
This was the first time RCB had fielded all three of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jacob Duffy and Josh Hazlewood – the legspinner Suyash Sharma made way. This suggested RCB expected conditions to play similarly to their previous game in Raipur, against Mumbai Indians, with seam movement and inconsistent bounce throughout.
When the match began – after a rain delay of an hour and a quarter – it became clear that this was a much better pitch to bat on, but there was still something in it for the seamers. Bhuvneshwar showed this with a cross-seamer that nipped away to nick off Finn Allen in the third over, and Hazlewood showed this by getting a short-of-length ball to rear at Ajinkya Rahane and have him caught and bowled off a miscued pull in the fifth over.
KKR still scored 56 in their powerplay, though, and 31 of those runs came in two overs from Duffy, who took the new ball ahead of Hazlewood, and didn’t do too much that was obviously wrong, but Allen, Rahane and Angkrish Raghuvansh were good enough to put away marginal errors in line and length.
That Dubey over was the last bit of real joy with the ball for KKR. Vaibhav Arora kept drifting onto Kohli’s pads in an 18-run second over, and then Bethell took his revenge on Dubey by going 6, 4, 4 at the start of the third.
Kartik Tyagi removed Bethell with a nasty short ball that rushed him on the pull, but he followed that up by straying down the leg side and overcompensating with width, and Devdutt Padikkal put both away to the boundary to get his innings moving.
RCB finished the powerplay at 66 for 1, with Kohli swivelling to pull Tyagi for six in the sixth over and ending that phase on 30 off 14.
From there, it was just a case of ticking off the remaining runs with no need for undue risk. No one is better at that game than Kohli. He scored eight twos – the joint third-most for him in an IPL innings – and found the boundary whenever the viewer may have wondered how long it had been since the last one. Mishaps at the other end – Tyagi dismissed Padikkal with an into-the-pitch cutter before pinging Rajat Patidar on the helmet; a Sunil Narine carrom ball forced a miscue from Patidar; Manish Pandey took a flying one-hander at point to send back Tim David – were mere blips in RCB’s otherwise silky-smooth ride.
And as the end neared, Kohli grew more expansive, playing two of his most eye-catching shots – a straight six off Anukul Roy with barely any follow-through, and a whipped six of iron wrists off Tyagi – to hurry towards the century mark. He got there with a single off Arora in the 19th over, and Jitesh Sharma finished the game soon after, flat-batting Dubey past long-on to bring up victory with five balls remaining.
Brief scores:
Royal Challengers Bengaluru 194 for 4 in 19.1 overs (Jacob Bethell 15, Virat Kohli 105*, Devdutt Padikkal 39, Rajat Patidar 11; Kartik Tyagi 3-32, Sunil Narine 1-31) beat Kolkata Knight Riders 192 for 4 in 20 overs (Ajinkya Rahane 19, Finn Allen 18, Angkrish Raghuvanshi 71, Rinku Singh 49*, Cameron Green 32; Bhuveneshwar Kumar 1-34, Josh Hazelwood 1-35, Raasik Salam 1-35) by six wickets
[Cricinfo]
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