Wake up, the World Cup’s here
Temba Bavuma's past few days have been hectic, to say the least.
The South Africa captain arrived in India with his team for the World Cup on September 25, but only to fly back home for a family emergency right before their first warm-up match on September 29.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Bavuma missed the second warm-up game on October 2 as well but returned to India just in time for the Captain's Day event held in Ahmedabad on Wednesday.
The 33-year-old had to travel between continents thrice in 10 days. So, one cannot really blame him for dozing off for a few minutes.
Unfortunately for him, his drowsiness overtook him right when he was on stage during the Captain's Day event.
In the video, it seemed that Bavuma snoozed off for a little while when Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan was speaking.
However, Bavuma claimed that he in fact was wide awake during the whole event, and it was just the camera angle that made it seem like he had nodded off.
Whatever may be the case, the visual of Bavuma looking lost in the land of dreams could be seen as symbolic to how the build-up to the World Cup has been like.
The World Cup this year is taking place in India, the country where over a billion people live and breathe cricket.
But the build-up to the mega event, however, has been quite underwhelming. Cricket fans are used to seeing stars of Indian cinema, renowned singers and dancers perform in elaborate opening ceremonies ahead of every edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Naturally, the expectation was that something similar would also happen for the World Cup, perhaps at an even greater scale, hence this is the biggest tournament in the sport and not just an annual domestic Twenty20 competition.
But the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) chose not to splurge on an opening ceremony and instead only hosted a Captain's Day event, where the attention was mostly on the Indian captain Rohit Sharma, his Pakistani counterpart Babar Azam and their impending India-Pakistan clash on October 14.
The talks all around before this edition of the World Cup has been how the ODI format is feeling less significant now more than ever.
Some are hoping that the World Cup will breathe life into the ODI format while others are predicting that the 2023 World Cup will be the beginning of the end of ODIs.
The impact of this World Cup can be judged after the tournament ends. For now, the fact is that today, with the clash between last year's finalists New Zealand and England, the 13th edition of the ODI World Cup has commenced in a mostly empty Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
The sight of Sachin Tendulkar -- one of the greatest cricketers of all time and also ICC's global ambassador for this showpiece event -- carrying the World Cup trophy into the 132,000-capacity arena before the match should have been accompanied by a raucous reaction from a packed house at the world's largest cricket stadium.
Instead, Sachin carried the crown jewel of world cricket with little applause and the match commenced with little to no fanfare.
The World Cup is already here, but it looks like India is yet to wake up. It appears the BCCI missed a trick by not having the hosts play the World Cup opener.
Comments