Ahmed Raza Takes Charge as UAE Name Former Captain Their New Men's Head Coach

The United Arab Emirates have turned to one of their own. Ahmed Raza, the former captain of the men's national team, has been appointed the UAE's new men's head coach, taking over from Lalchand Rajput, who has decided to step down from the role. It is the kind of appointment that makes immediate sense. Raza does not need an introduction to the players, the setup, or the peculiar demands of cricket in the Emirates. He has lived all of it. As a player he captained the country. More recently he has been the head coach of the UAE women's team. Now he takes charge of the men's side, and he starts this week. "I am honoured to have been chosen for this exciting role and look forward to beginning my new innings," Raza said on his appointment. The choice of words was deliberate, and it was telling. This is not a coach arriving from outside with a plan to impose. It is a man who has already worn the shirt, led the team, and coached within the system, talking about a new innings in a career that has been bound up with UAE cricket for years. That matters more than it might look from the outside. The UAE are an Associate nation, and Associate cricket is a world of short turnarounds, small squads, and players who juggle the game with the rest of their lives. A head coach in that environment has to be a selector, a mentor, a tactician, and often a counsellor too. Knowing the players as people, knowing which of them needs an arm around the shoulder and which needs a push, is not a luxury. It is the job. Raza brings that knowledge with him on day one. His time with the women's team matters as well. Coaching across the men's and women's programmes gives a coach a fuller picture of the talent coming through, and the UAE have been working hard to build depth rather than rely on a small core of familiar names. Rajput's departure closes a chapter of its own. What Raza inherits is a team that has spent years punching above its weight on the international stage, qualifying for global events and testing themselves against full members, but still chasing the consistency that would make those performances the norm rather than the occasion. The challenge in front of him is a familiar one. The UAE have shown they can compete in bursts. The harder task is building a side that does it week after week, series after series, with players who understand their roles and trust the plan. There will be no honeymoon period to speak of. Raza starts this week, and in international cricket the next fixture is never far away. But there is something steadying about an appointment like this. The players know the man. They know what he stands for, because they have seen it up close as teammates and as opponents in training. That trust is the foundation everything else is built on, and Raza begins his tenure with it already in place. For UAE cricket, this is a bet on continuity and on knowledge that cannot be bought. Whether it pays off will be decided on the field, over the months ahead. But on the day of his appointment, the logic of it is hard to argue with. The job has gone to a man who has already given much of his cricketing life to the UAE. Now he gets to lead it.