Shyam Bhatia batting for cricket history

As a source of public engagement through its memorabilia, a museum is bound to history in so many ways.

Perhaps nobody knows this better than Shyam Bhatia, cricket enthusiast extraordinaire and the creator of the UAE’s most famous museum that honours individuals who have continued to make the sport one of the biggest and most popular in the world.

While the state-of-the-art depository includes many valuable artists and memorabilia on display, it also aims to chronicle and showcase the groundbreaking achievements of some of cricket’s iconic players.

The museum’s design echoes several great moments in cricket with the newest edition being a special section dedicated to nine incredible World Cup-winning captains, from West Indian legend Clive Lloyd to England’s exceptional talent Eoin Morgan, more recently.

Bhatia commissioned Richie Ryall, a former South African first-class cricketer turned artist, to create an oil painting depicting the great captains. Ryall’s work is majestic and the artwork hangs proudly on the private museum wall together with the nine bats used by the heroes in their World Cup-winning roles.

All bats are personally autographed and also feature key statistics from the World Cup matches.

Among them are the bat Clive Lloyd used when leading the Windies to victories in 1975 and 1979,

Indian skipper Kapil Dev’s bat from 1983 where India pulled off a sensational victory at Lord’s in England, and Allan Border’s victorious bat from 1987.

Others on display are bats from Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga (1996), Australia’s Ricky Ponting (2007 & 2009), India’s M.S. Dhoni (2011), Australia’s Michael Clarke (2011) and England Eoin Morgan (2019).

“This is a labour of love,” said Bhatia, who is continually looking to update the museum and add more interesting artifacts and memorabilia.

“It’s something that I am extremely proud of as it’s very rare to be able to collect bats from nine legends of the game, with their autographs.

“This is a huge inspiration and I hope that everyone who gets to view these incredible cricket bats, and the painting, will also be inspired,” he added.