Eight months of the year, the idea that regular guys and kids might go outside for a kick-about, as the Brits call it, would seem exotic. It’s too hot, and by the time it’s not quite so hot it’s midnight, and even in a country that tends to be nocturnal in the summer, that’s too late to be out playing games.

This time of year, however, we do actually see people playing pickup games in Abu Dhabi.

For example:

Just outside my front door is a stretch of green that runs parallel to Airport Road. The green belt has a lot of low, drought-resistant trees in it, but here or there are a few stretches of treeless grass … and this time of year we can pretty much expect to see Pakistani kids and adults playing pickup cricket.

I’m not sure how this works, exactly, because cricket requires even more space than baseball, given that you can hit the ball behind you and score runs. The pitching/hitting action, at a cricket game, is in the middle of a very circular space, and the ball sprays in all directions. As opposed to baseball, where you can play in half a field, if the batters agree not to go to the opposite field.

It would seem to be difficult to adapt cricket to a half-dozen kids … but they’re out there trying. Baseball, of course, has a couple of spinoff street games that allow for competition with small numbers and reduced space. “Work up” is one and “over the line” is another.

I need to ask my subcontinent friends if they have “cricket-light” games. To me, it looks like just some bowling and some hitting — and a lot of chasing.

The exceptions to these cramped exhibitions would be the handful of wide spaces — such as the parking lot at the Al Jazira stadium — where you might see dozens of adults trying to get several games into a sizable but not enormous space. But they do it.

The other common pickup sport is, of course, soccer. Unlike cricket, which seems to be 99 percent subcontinenters (Indians, Pakistanis), a soccer game almost always is going to be Arabs. Not Emiratis; if they play, it must be on real fields somewhere. The pickup games are, however, Arabs … albeit expat Arabs.

The preferred “field”, locally,  is a wide median in Saada Street, a six-lane highway just north of where we live.

On weekends, it is not unusual to see guys playing 7-on-7 games in the median, on a “field” maybe 40 yards long and 25 wide.  I just saw one of these, with guys around 30 years old who weren’t bad.

If you play with seven, I suppose the typical “formation” is the traditional 2-2-2.

The trick of a game in the median is not to kick the ball into the traffic, in three lanes north and south of the median. A wide ball is going to end up in traffic and maybe get carried 100 yards away, and you risk being run over when you step into the street.

Smaller kids play in any sort of space, including the parking lot next to a mosque and the parking lot outside Kahlifa University, where smaller kids can get a 3-on-3 game in while playing inside curbs — providing raised pavement that keeps the balls from rolling away.

I find it interesting that when kids here play, they tend to use a ball that is more like a beach ball than a soccer ball. Oversized, too light, something somebody bought for $1 somewhere. This is a fairly wealthy country, and you would think the kids would have something like a real soccer ball.

I have never, ever seen a pickup basketball game in Abu Dhabi. I have never seen a basketball hoop, either. In an urban area, you’d think we would see the stray hoop … but no.

I’m told that in Dubai, the city up the coast, that hoopsters can find pickup games at certain parks. But not in Abu Dhabi.

I have, however, seen quasi-volleyball games, often involving guys I take to be Afghans — or Pakistanis from just across the Afghan border. Teams of four or five each, knocking a small ball over a net strung between a fence and a streetlight. And kind of into it.

This is not the most sports-oriented town in the world. No question. Weather has a lot to do with it, and a lack of facilities is a lot more.