A day after Iceland cricket made a hilarious offer of permanent residency to the now retired Indian cricketer Ambati Rayadu, the body’s virtual mail box has been flooded with visa requests.
The innocent, the inspired and the plain old notorious have together come to flood the association with requests for residency in the fairy tale island nation of magic spells and witchcraft, where one can play cricket in dense midnight without any floodlights.
This happened after Iceland cricket, in a bizarre tweet had offered Rayudu permanent residency in their country so that he can play for them after he was once again looked over for a World Cup spot in the Indian team.
Rayudu was named among five standbys for the World Cup, but was ignored twice when the selectors and the Indian team management opted for Rishabh Pant and Mayank Agarwal as replacements for the injured pair of Shikhar Dhawan and Vijay Shankar
Rayudu initially criticized the selectors for not picking him in India’s squad that travelled to England and was also not called up following injuries to and Vijay Shankar, with Pant and Agarwal selected instead of him.
Building on this, Iceland in a tweet said that Mayank Agarwal, who was the latest call up to the Indian team, only has three professional wickets at 72.33 and that Rayudu could play for them instead.
They did not stop here and further tweeted out the application form for permanent residency in Iceland if he intended to take them up on their offer.
However, what Iceland cricket did not probably realize was that many ended up taking their tongue-in-cheek tweet seriously, a bit too seriously.
Flustered but brazen as always, the association took to Twitter and pleaded people to stop sending emails with requests for visas and a chance to play for their team, adding that they rather approach England instead since “they’ll take anyone”.
While Iceland Cricket sure seems to have a special talent for stirring the dust, they’re not the first to have ridiculed the English cricket system for their undying penchant of choosing non-English players.
In June, veteran cricketer Sunil Gavaskar also poked fun of England by branded them 'Rest of the World' side and said, "England have played 6 to 7 cricketers. Their captain is Irish... Jofra Archer came from the West Indies a few years ago,"
After all, facts are facts: Eoin Morgan, the England captain, was born in Ireland and made his international debut for Ireland. Jofra Archer came to England from the Caribbean just a few years before and he found his way into the England World Cup squad.
What’s funny though is that Iceland Cricket itself is vice-captained by Abhishek Raj Chauhan, a Delhi-born man who now holds Icelandic citizenship. He used to play competitive cricket for Delhi during his earlier years in India and now works as a bartender in the island.
While this is something that remains largely unknown, the world of Twitter still managed to read between the lines of the tweet and wondered if the tweet was passively also referring to immigration. However, Iceland Cricket was quick to wash out any such notions in another tweet
Rayudu Wednesday retired from all forms of cricket without specifying his reasons for calling it quits. Rayudu played 55 ODIs for India, scoring 1694 runs at an average of 47.05.Declared the preferred No.4 batsman by Kohli not many months ago, Rayudu was ignored for Shankar in India’s final squad for the big event.
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