Perth: I’m fortunate to be at Perth and witnessing four teams playing in the World Cup. Though it is a mad chase after these teams, who are training in four different grounds, this calm city with hardly any traffic makes it easy to get around.
Taxi drivers, mainly Indians, make your journey interesting as they entertain you with their tales of cricketers. It was through my taxi driver I learned that the Crown Metropol hotel, where the UAE team stayed, belongs to the late television tycoon Kerry Packer’s son James.
Kerry, who was the founder of World Series Cricket in the late 1970s that introduced coloured clothing for players, died in December 2005. He was one of the richest and most influential men in Australia, while James is chairman of Crown Resorts, Australia’s largest resort and entertainment group.
During the World Cup many tales emerge from the players. The UAE’s Krishna Chandran revealed how Australian opener David Warner used to drive him to an Australian cricket institute during the Kerala cricket team’s 45-day camp in Brisbane in 2008.
“He used to talk about cricket, but it was only later we realised that he was a cricketer and was also occasionally helping out the regular driver of the institute’s van. One year later, all of us got the shock of our lives when we saw the same man pad up and walk out to bat for Australia,” Chandran said.
Khurram Khan, a flight purser with Emirates airline, revealed how he had served West Indies legend Brian Lara on one of his flights.
It is well-known that, wherever the West Indies team goes, they manage to liven up the place — and they did that in Perth. The players present themselves as a happy-go-lucky group with hardly any stress.
The Western Australian government had organised a welcome party for the West Indies team at the Perth Cultural Centre. Many Caribbean fans turned up and some of their players turned into singers during the function.
The star attraction of that event was, of course, Chris Gayle. He joined a band playing Calypso beats and accompanied one of their female singers. He also persuaded Andre Russell to join him on stage and the three of them danced and sang, and after one song Gayle jokingly asked the crowd whether Russell should leave the stage. The fans screamed ‘no’ and they continued to sing.
Some West Indies fans were seen struggling to take selfies with the 6ft 7in Curtly Ambrose, the bowling coach, since most of them barely reached his chest.
As the UAE team was flying out of Perth, a joke coined by some scribes on ‘how will the UAE be able to beat India?’ followed them. It said: First, transform every player into Shaiman Anwar, and then the Emirates Cricket Board must buy India Cements — as Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Suresh Raina, Ravichandran Ashwin and Mohit Sharma all play for this company, which owns Chennai Super Kings — and not let these players take to the field. And finally to get Virat Kohli’s girlfriend, Bollywood actress Anuskha Sharma, to relocate to Dubai.
When the Afghanistan team arrived at Perth, local journalists crowded around their star player, Samiullah Shenwari, wanting to know more about cricket in his country. He said: “Until eight years ago, there was nothing called cricket in Afghanistan, and today you will see cricket being played in every street and every school.”
