Countdown to World Cup begins - in Tangier

New venue promotes the game in Morocco and prepares to welcome Pakistan, South Africa and Sri Lanka

As England and India grapple with bad light and drizzle at Trent Bridge this weekend, 1,000 miles away three of their biggest rivals are preparing to indulge in a little fantasy cricket. The Morocco Cup, a triangular tournament between Pakistan, Sri Lanka and South Africa, begins on Monday in Tangier, where temperatures are a constant 80 degrees, the air is cooled by a pleasant breeze off the Mediterranean and the rainfall figure for the entire month of August is officially nil.

Were it not for the fact that, until very recently, no one here had ever even heard of the game, Tangier would seem the perfect place for cricket. The perfect place, indeed, for an Arab multi-millionaire to build his own stadium and stump up $250,000 (£163,000) worth of prize-money to lure the game's big names.

Moroccan cricket's sugar daddy is Abdur Rahman Bukhatir, the mogul who also built Sharjah, the desert venue in the United Arab Emirates that, during the 1990s, became the world capital of one-day cricket. Bukhatir is not only hoping big-time cricket's first visit to north Africa might soon be followed by a second – October's planned Pakistan-Australia Test series is still looking for a home – but that the locals will latch on to the game and start playing it in numbers. He has offset some of his hefty investment by selling television rights to screen the Morocco Cup in Africa, Asia and Europe.

"Stadium" might be overstating it a little when it comes to discussing the ground five miles outside Tangier. True, it did take £4m and 15 months to build: but a lot of that effort went on flattening the site's troublesome hills. (Bukhatir is also shelling out on a giant white villa overlooking the ground, challenging his architect to provide a view of the pitch from every room including the toilets.) There is just one 2,000-capacity stand and room for another 5,000 people to sit on the grass banks round the side.

"It's like cricket pitches used to be 40 or 50 years ago," said Nick Jennings, the Englishman working as Bukhatir's media manager. "But in time, if there's sufficient demand we'll build extra stands..." Work is already under way to find some fans to fill those new stands. The former Indian Test batsman Mohinder Amarnath has been hired as national coach and has spent the last three years encouraging young Moroccans to take an interest in the great game.

"We have nine clubs now, in Rabat, Casablanca and Tangier, with a total of around 400 players," he says. "They're all football clubs that have formed their own cricket teams and we go to different places every day and hold coaching... Really, football is the only game over here – though they've produced some great athletes as well, obviously – and cricket is a new game and a whole new language for them. But with this tournament, we should be able to get a lot of exposure and put the game in front of the local people more..."

It is, admits Amarnath, a challenge, taking cricket to a country with no history of the sport. Unlike Sharjah, there is no great Asian expatriate population to call on in Tangier to kick-start interest and fill the stadiums. In fact, the deciding factor for Bukhatir's choice when he stood before his map of the world with a pin seemed to be that in Morocco the time zone is right for broadcasting live back to Asia during prime time, and the weather is nice.

But there is a cautious confidence that, beyond Amarnath's 400 converts and an expected small plane-load of British-based Pakistani supporters, they will be able to put bums on seats. Tickets and transport to the games are free and there has been a major publicity campaign in the local media to whip up support. And if the prospect of seeing Waqar Younis and Muttiah Muralitharan for nothing does not swing it for the locals then the daily raffles of motorbikes, televisions and mobile phones surely will not do any harm to attendances.

Tangier has come at just the right time for Pakistan. The cricket authorities there have lost around £20m in the last 18 months, thanks to tours cancelled and disrupted by the country's volatile political situation. David Richardson of the International Cricket Council, does not feel the need for new neutral venues is necessarily desperate – after all, Lord's would be a neutral venue for Pakistan-Australia – but that the Morocco project is very welcome for the way it is expanding cricket's horizons.

Mike Procter, the former South Africa all-rounder, spent three days in Tangier last month to look over the venue for the ICC and gave it a clean bill of health. "I was very impressed," he says. "They were very well organised and I thought they deserved to get international status. It's a nice climate. The people are very hospitable. The pitches looked good. It should be a very good series."

The fact that the tournament is taking place at all threatens to overshadow events on the field. It should not: Morocco's novice cricket public are getting a top-drawer showdown between three of the world's best one-day sides. A tight schedule sees the three play each other twice over the next week, with a final on 21 August. Despite the absence of Shoaib Akhtar, recuperating in England with his latest leg injury, Pakistan may enter the series as slight favourites: South Africa are bedding in their new coach, Eric Simons, and coming straight into the tournament from their close season.

Sri Lanka, meanwhile, after a dismal showing in the NatWest Series in England, have reshuffled their squad and recalled Aravinda de Silva, the 36-year-old hero of their 1996 World Cup win. It is tempting to say that the countdown to next February's World Cup begins right here – in front of a smattering of young Moroccans half-drawn by the lure of a prize draw for a free motorbike.