SK Cricket Olympics: Mohammad Irfan and Ishant Sharma ready to lead the basketball team
At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be much of a connection between cricket and basketball, or for that matter, cricketers and basketball players. Sports like football and volleyball have become part of the regular routine for cricket teams now, while sports like table-tennis have always been a great recreational sport.
This connection does seem to be growing however. Detriot Pistons Centre Andre Drummond paid a visit to the Lord’s cricket ground in June, where he met with Brendon McCullum and Eoin Morgan and the trio shared trade secrets on the cricket field. Even more recently, the Indian team paid a visit to the American Airlines Area – home of the Miami Heat and tried their hand at the game.
In the recently concluded Rio Olympics 2016, the men’s US Basketball Team claimed the gold medal by beating Serbia in the final. This marked the 15th time that the USA team walked away with the old, with Olympic administrators reaching out to all possible sources to end their dominance.
Stating that Olympic Basketball is becoming too one-sided, they reached out to a very interesting breed of sportsmen – the cricketers. The people in power have rallied around the cricketers to form their own team and compete at the Olympics to take on the United States (and the world!)
Read: Part 1 – The 4X100 Metre relay race featuring Virat Kohli, Andre Russell and Glenn Maxwell Also: Part 2 – Andrew Flintoff, David Warner and Jason Holder try to knock each other out
Note: This is a humourous piece and the views are not intended to be taken literally.
In part 3 of the SK Cricket Olympics series, we form a basketball dream team capable of taking on anyone:
1) Mohammad Irfan – Centre
Country – Pakistan
Height – 7’1
Strengths – Dunking, blocking, towering over people
While on the lookout for a ‘big’ player to man the ‘low post’ and claim rebounds while destorying the rim, they stumbled upon Pakistan’s giant Mohammad Irfan in his hometown in Pakistan. Standing at 7’1 feet, he is the tallest cricketer to have ever played the game and was an automatic choice at Centre. The authories have couriered a whole bunch of Shaquille O’Neal DVDs to Irfan and asked him to ape the legendary player’s style.
Upon hearing the news, the US Basketball team is frantically trying to get ‘Shaq’ out of retirement.