A Bangladeshi supporter takes a catch off Jason Roy in Cardiff. ReutersHugs, handshakes and chilled beer awaited Mitchell Starc at the Trent Bridge dressing room after his match-swinging performance against the West Indies, wherein he not only picked up a five-for but also became the fastest to pick 150 wickets in ODIs, in just 77 matches. Nathan Lyon was ready with a new nickname too — FLOAT, the acronym when expanded reading Fastest Left-Armer of All Time. It was a revenge of sorts, as it was Starc who coined the Greatest off-spinner of All Time — GOAT — acronym for Lyon, after he became the most successful Australian off-spinner in Tests. Lyon, apparently, was not so chuffed about the moniker, and was waiting for an opportune time to exact revenge.
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Living out of a bus
Hopping from one venue to the other in England consumes a lot of time. Though some of the Australian cricketers are happy that it doesn’t involve spending time at the airport and on flights, they still have to fight boredom.
So they have devised means to fight tedium — to play cards, specifically card game ‘31’. At the back of the bus, they have fixed about eight seats and squeezed in a table. “Sometimes, there aren’t enough seats for all of us. At times, there are 15 of us,” Pat Cummins told Fox Sports. The bus has almost become their sanctuary. “It is a great place to relax. We always play the card game ‘31’, which is basic but easy for a big group to play. At the back of the bus, we have about eight seats around a table which always becomes the cards table. There are TVs to watch the World Cup, and a good coffee machine that gets a decent workout,” he adds.
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Best chums, ready for face-off
Virat Kohli and Marcus Stoinis are RCB chums, besides bumping into each other on the international circuit. Fair enough to explain their mateship. But it apparently dates back to their late teens. They met through mutual friend Shreyans Jain, who grew up with Kohli in India before moving to attend Perth’s Hale High school with Stoinis. When Kohli visited Australia on tours such as with India’s under-19s, the trio would train together in suburban Perth.
Stoinis says he detected the spark right from those days. “You could tell (Kohli) was a jet at that stage. He’s a great bloke. Mate, anyone that has a bad word to say about him doesn’t actually know him,” he says. Like a good friend, he understands Kohli’s hyper-aggro on the field. “You’ll see him with a lot of passion, you’ll see him screaming and shouting, but he’ll never swear at a player, he never really sledges a player, he never really actually says anything to a player,” he says. He also dwells light on Kohli’s other big passion than cricket. “He enjoys chilling out playing FIFA (on PlayStation), or just talking. He enjoys a deep and meaningful conversation. He enjoys learning and getting to know people. But he doesn’t have much time off — he’s a sought-after man in India.”
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Rewind before forward march
Rewind and reboot. That’s been Mitchell Starc’s mantra as he prepared for the World Cup, trying to replicate his deadly form from the 2015 edition. The Australian paceman and his coaches spent months watching videos of his performances from the previous World Cup, where he was player of the tournament, taking 22 wickets with an average of 10.18. Starc has been through more downs than ups since, especially 2018 where he struggled for rhythm and confidence. Andrew Adams, his bowling coach at New South Wales, told AAP that they tried to make him ‘feel like’ he did in 2015 in the run up to this edition of the World Cup by watching replays of his spells that were critical in Australia reclaiming the title four years ago.
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Moeen weighs in on loyalty test
Little seems to have changed in over 29 years, possibly much to Norman Tebbit’s chagrin. Way back in April 1990, Lord Tebbit, a Tory politician, had called for a test of national loyalty for the South Asian and Caribbean immigrants and their children who were British nationals. Lord Tebbit suggested that the immigrants, who support their native countries during a game of cricket involving England, were yet to be integrated into their adopted home.
Lord Tebbit is now 88 years old, and as England is hosting the 2019 ICC World Cup, The Times (London) emphatically declared a few days ago: “Asian fans at the Cricket World Cup hit Tebbit test for six”. The newspaper put out some figures. “…more than 40% of tickets sold for the Cricket World Cup have been snapped up by fans of Asian origin cheering on other countries”. It also mentioned that the demand from British Asians for the India versus Pakistan fixture at Old Trafford on June 16 has been so high that “almost 600,000 supporters applied for the 25,000 seats available”.
Moeen Ali in his World Cup blog for The Guardian said he did not feel it was a big deal if people of Asian origin settled in the United Kingdom support their ‘home side’. “Firstly, it doesn’t actually matter if someone who was born in the UK supports another country. If people have a strong affiliation to Pakistan, for example, through their roots, why can’t they support them? Who cares, right? People following cricket is the important thing.” Ali, however, clarified that he always supported England first.
