Wills Cup Snippets (29 October 1998)

29 October 1998

Wills Cup Snippets

Syed Ashfaqul Haque

Indian players wore black badge during their match against Australia to mourn the death of former national captain Golam Ahmed. The former vice-president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) died at Hyderabad yesterday morning. The off-spinner, who was also secretary of BCCI and a national selector, played at the Dhaka Stadium in the first India-Pakistan Test in 1955. He played 22 Tests and led India in three of them. He retired in 1959.

Mohammad Azharuddin celebrated his historic 300th one-day appearance by scoring a duck. The stylish batsman became the first cricketer to play in 300 one-day internationals when he led India at the big bowl yesterday. But Australia's new-ball bowler Damien Fleming spoiled his party when he caught the elegant stroke-maker leg before in his final delivery of the third over. The Hyderabad-born batsman made his international debut against England in Bangalore in early 1985. Azharuddin, who holds the world record of scoring three consecutive centuries on his Test debut, scored 8554 runs in 299 one-day matches. The tally has not budged after yesterday. He is only 95 runs short of breaking the world record for highest runs in the instant version of cricket. The former West Indies opener Desmond Haynes holds the record.

He was not Pattrick 'Ross' but Pattrick Keane. And the Daily Star Sport should have published his version while running the story on him, observed the man in controversy yesterday.

This correspondent was at fault in publishing his name incorrectly, but it was a Bangladesh Cricket Board official, with whom Keane has been working for the past few days, who confirmed his identity as Ross, and not Keane. But having seen Keane's dealing with the media, one does not need to take his version.

Keane, an International Cricket Council (ICC) official, earned the dubious distinction of annoying the media here in Dhaka in the shortest possible time. The Australian, who is an assistant to the ICC chief executive David Richards, did his best to bar the journalists and photographers from performing their professional duty in the ongoing cricket carnival.

From his very first day on duty, he handled the press with a degree of arrogance and insolence. Perhaps drawing confidence from his structural superiority, the big man from down under threatened, in a menacing manner, to throw the media people out of the place on a number of occasions.

The pent-up wrath of the press went out for Keane, when on Tuesday he prevented twice the newsmen and lens-men from taking interviews and photographs at official sessions at the Sonargaon Hotel and Bangabandhu National Stadium. The incident prompted the press to ask his employers to declare him persona non grata.

But thanks to Keane, good sense prevailed lately. Star Sport has nothing personal against him because we have not encountered him ever before. We will be happy to run a story on his experience here at his convenience.

Indians broke the trend. This was for the first time in the ongoing Wills International Cup that a team batting first won a match. In the previous three matches all the teams - New Zealand, South Africa and Sri Lanka - beat their opponents after chasing the formidable targets. Also, yesterday was the first time when both the captains failed. Earlier, all the other five captains had clicked in their own ways.

The newly installed electronic scoreboard at the national stadium is in want of sponsors. Yesterday, the organisers encouraged entrepreneurs to use the scoreboard for advertisement. Cute cosmetics and the Square Pharmaceuticals were the first to grab the unique offers. Surely there will be many more in the offing.

India scored 307 runs in their share of 50 overs. But seven odd balls (from 'no' and 'wide') made it a run-a-ball score. They scored 307 runs from 307 balls.

BCB had banned the use of crackers at the Bangabandhu. However, last evening, enthusiastic fans lightened up the stadium with an audio-visual display, one of them landing at the foot of the photojournalists on the ground.

Source :: The Bangladesh Daily Star (https://www.dailystarnews.com)