Perth: At the UAE team hotel on Thursday night, journalists queued up to meet the UAE cricketers, giving me a strange sense of joy — it was something I had been hoping to see for many years.
More often than not I have been the only one interviewing them, so to see a crowd waiting to speak to them says they are no longer ordinary cricketers!
Mazhar Khan, the UAE team manager, had a tough time handling requests from journalists, most of them wanting exclusive chats with the players.
Watching the players being surrounded by media was a proud moment for chief selector Mohammad Reda Abbas, while Chitrala Sudhakar, the physiotherapist, was seen helping Mazhar in dealing with the throng.
Since the UAE players were available for interviews, it was a boon for story-starved Indian journalists. So almost all Indian scribes were after the two Indians in the team — Swapnil Patil and Krishna Chandran Karate.
They wanted to know how Patil would find coming up against India’s Ajinkya Rahane and Rohit Sharma, who he played with in Mumbai, and for Chandran to be meeting Stuart Binny, who he has played in the Karnataka State Cricket Association League in Bangalore.
When century maker Shaiman Anwar arrived, everyone rushed to meet him. Pointing towards me, he was heard saying: “Every time I score a century or play a big knock in domestic cricket, Gulf News contacts me to ask how I felt after playing that knock. Since I am not used to speaking, I always ask him to tell me what he felt about my innings, and then I chip in.”
Every UAE player has his own stories about playing in the World Cup. Chandran revealed that his nickname Karate has made him a star.
“Frankly I wanted Chandran on my shirt, but Tyka Sports, our national team’s kit suppliers, put down my last name as Karate,” he said. “Then, when I wanted to change it, coach Aaqib Javed suggested I retain it as he believed that the name would make me the star attraction.
“Now, wherever I go, everyone wants to know of my connection with karate and I need to clarify to them that, in my mother-tongue Malayalam, it is actually ‘kaa raa te’.”
Chandran also revealed that, being the only Malayalee in the World Cup, some reporters have made fun of him using a popular joke on Malayalees that says ‘even if you go to the moon there will be a Malayalee there!’.
A few journalists, after speaking to Khurram Khan, were heard commenting that he must be the most handsome cricketer in the World Cup. This was followed by a discussion on how Khurram, at 43, is the oldest cricketer and, despite having a job that requires him to fly for hours, he has maintained himself and his form.
One scribe revealed that there was a blog that says ‘Khurram doesn’t age. He decides how old he is’.
Patil revealed that his parents live in a tiny village called Darpale in the interiors of Vasai in Mumbai, and they have set up a giant screen inside their home for relatives and villagers to see him play against the Indian team.
Chandran then added that people in his village of Kollengode in Kerala, known more for its Ayurveda centre, are all expected to be glued to the television.
