Desert Vipers CEO Phil Oliver is confident the players and management will do everything possible to win back-to-back DP World ILT20 titles. After claiming the Season 4 crown, the Desert Vipers are aiming to become the first team in the league’s history to win two consecutive championships.
Speaking to the Vipers Voices podcast Oliver said: “Four different winners in four seasons of (DP World) ILT20 shows the strength of the competition. There is so much depth in terms of play and quality and the whole infrastructure. It is a very hard league to maintain top level excellence in terms of consistent winning performances.
“All I can say is I think we will give ourselves the very best chance of that. We will be well prepared. We will do a very strong recruitment process, I am sure.
“We will try not to look too far ahead, simply just put in place what we can that will give us the best prospect of going all the way, but there is a lot of cricket to be played before that (and) a lot of work to be done before that.
“I am optimistic that what we have built in terms of the Desert Vipers and our culture will stand us in good stead. There is a lot of work that has gone on amongst the whole group. There is a lot of continuity there with the cricket group, the non-cricket group.
“We all know each other pretty well now. So we are looking forward to getting back together at JA Resorts pretty soon and giving ourselves a crack at that Season 5 –and we cannot wait.”
Phil Oliver was talking in the wake of the Vipers’ participation in the ExxonMobil Guyana Global Super League (GSL), where the franchise lost in the Qualifier for the final, against Major League Cricket side the San Francisco Unicorns.
The Unicorns, in turn, lost the ultimate match to hosts and defending champions the Guyana Amazon Warriors. Two other teams also took part in the tournament – the Lahore Qalandars from the Pakistan Super League and Australian Big Bash League side the Perth Scorchers XI.
Preparations for the DP World ILT20 will intensify next week, with the league due to announce each franchise’s retained players and direct signings. The Development Tournament to showcase the cream of UAE talent is scheduled for September, followed by the main tournament auction on October 5. The Vipers CEO said local and regional players would be a major focus.
“The UAE players are such important part of the jigsaw for us in (the DP World) ILT20. And indeed, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (are) as well,” he said.
“We will be (again) having one player back from each of those nations, and there will be equivalent tournaments set up (in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) to assess the talent and help with the recruitment process of those players in the auction. So there is a lot of work for us to do. We will be getting our heads together pretty soon.
“We will focus a lot on the UAE players, as we have shown that over the previous four seasons we have had some real success stories. And having taken three of the guys (Vriitya Aravind, Sanjay Pahal and Matiullah Khan) over to Guyana can only help with that. We hope that we are going to get a good set of UAE players, as we always have done in this tournament.”
Reflecting on the GSL, the Vipers CEO said the team would take valuable lessons and positives from its campaign, despite falling short in the Qualifier and missing out on a place in the final.
He said he was particularly encouraged by the performances of the UAE players and several newcomers to the side.
“Pride is something we can reflect back on this tournament with,” he said. “We learned a lot, which was obviously one of the goals when we went into the GSL to try and learn some things ahead of Season 5 of the (DP World) ILT20.
“We tried to assemble a squad that had a bit of continuity on that basis. Yes, we fell a little bit short, but I think we were clear from the outset that this was going to be a very competitive tournament by its very nature: five strong teams from around the world (and) I think three of them have won their own tournaments recently.
“We knew it was going to be a tall order, and you do not have much margin for error in a five-team tournament. Four group stage games, we won two, lost two, and a couple of those games could easily have gone either way.
“We cannot have too many regrets around individual results. I think we did our very best to put in place, in quite a short period of time, a winning culture that gave us the best chance. And I think we can reflect on a job well done in that regard.
“We had some challenges ahead of the tournament, losing people like Chris Green, Jason Behrendorff, Khuzaima Bin Tanvir, and Daryl Mitchell. We had some high-quality players missing, but we had a good group of players, players who stepped up. And I am glad to say that we saw a bit of a breakthrough from a few players, both, I think, from our UAE guys, but also (from) new players to the Vipers setup, people like Zachary Carter and Saiteja Mukkamalla, who made half-centuries.
“It was great to see some of those performances up close, and learn plenty about the group as we planned for Season 5 of (DP World) ILT20.”
Another focus for the team during the GSL in Guyana was its biodiversity campaign, which ran alongside the tournament and reflected the team’s mantra: “Without nature, there is no cricket.” Oliver said he was delighted with the impact the Desert Vipers made in the local community.
“It was a massive success,” he said. “We talk a lot about how we try and win on and off the field. And whilst we did not go all the way in terms of cricketing success, we absolutely did (win) off the field. I think that is a testament to the partners, including NatureWave, who pulled together some great activations, supported on our side by (Desert Vipers Sustainability Lead) Ben Hardy-Jones, and also Fuelre4m and Styrex.
“They were big supporters of what we were doing by being our front of shirt partner and enabling us to invest in NatureWave and the BioBlitzes. “We try and get into communities and leave a legacy, and that is absolutely what we did. And the great thing with that is that we were in an ideal place, thanks to the biodiversity of Guyana, to highlight the issues that we have been talking about over the last 18 months.
“We saw a range of wildlife that is unique up close, and took local schoolchildren out into national parks, botanical gardens, and cricket clubs. Two of the BioBlitzes were held in Georgetown Cricket Club and Demerara Cricket Club, where we were able to show the young cricketers who play there every week that there is biodiversity where they play, under their feet, literally. So it was really nice to do that.
“And we received local support from Discover Guyana, who worked very closely with us, to create some great content about what we were doing, and other stakeholders and the league themselves.
“We know that what we were doing was going to be attractive to our hosts, and so it showed.”Vipers Voices also spoke to Alan Smith, the founder of NatureWave, an organisation which regularly partners with the Desert Vipers in delivering their biodiversity campaigns across the DP World ILT20 and now the GSL as well.
Smith said he was very satisfied with the way the local community engaged with the BioBlitz.“Each event that we have been involved in so far, we have asked people to join in our BioBlitz,” he said. “And we are thrilled to say we have got over one and a half thousand wildlife records made by numerous people across Guyana. That goes to real citizen science research.
“So whilst it is a simple act of taking a photo of a living thing, it actually gets uploaded and used in conservation research, biodiversity change (and) climate change studies. We are really proud that one and a half thousand observations have been contributed. And we have had well over 200 people involved on the ground here (in Guyana).”
