The Hindu : Sport / Golf : Cricketers tee off in right earnest

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Nov 25, 2005

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Sport - Golf

Cricketers tee off in right earnest

Special Correspondent

BANGALORE: Ian Bishop was slightly bewildered on his arrival at Bangalore. He had flown out of England quite happy to have left the English weather behind and was looking forward to some sunny days here. "I never expected that it would be raining steadily here," remarked Bishop.

But the good news is that the sun has broken out at Bangalore and hopefully, over the next three days, the city will have ideal golfing conditions.

The inaugural edition of the McDowell's Signature World Cup of Golfing Cricketers may have got off to a wet start at the Karnataka Golf Association course here on Thursday but 128 enthusiastic golfers teed off over two sessions with a shotgun start on the opening day.

The first two days of the four-day event will have special invitees forming a foursome with one of the international cricketers for a number of special prizes. Needless to say that club golfers were willing to part with an arm and a leg for the prestige of playing with a cricketing star.

The World Cup of cricketing golfers will then battle it out over the last two days for team and individual trophies.

Kapil favourite

India's Kapil Dev has started out as most likely to win the individual event but West Indian Franklin Stephenson, who has almost turned professional in South Africa (where he now resides), surely would give Kapil a run for his money.

The first two days of the tournament would be Am-Am events with keen golfers playing with one of the cricketers. Dr. Farooq Abdullah, film stars Dev Anand and Ambarish are among the invitees to play on the first day.

Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have dropped out of the tournament possibly because there aren't enough single digit handicap cricketer-turned-golfers. Sir Gary Sobers has also stayed away.

The teams:

West Indies: Ian Bishop, Jeffery Dujon, Maurice Foster and Franklin Stephenson.

England: Ian Botham, Gladstone Small, Martin Bicknell and Chris Broad.

Australia: Mike Whitney, Terry Alderman, Dean Jones and Colin Miller.

Pakistan: Zaheer Abbas, Aamir Sohail, Waqar Younis and Akram Raza.

South Africa: Barry Richards, Clive Rice, Pat Symcox and Gary Kirsten.

New Zealand: Dipak Patel, Simon Doull, Murphy Su'a and Trevor Franklin.

Zimbabwe: Craig Evans, Alistair Campbell, Dirk Viljoen and Stuart Carlisle.

India: Kapil Dev, Roger Binny, Hanumant Singh and Nikhil Chopra.

Venkatpathy Raju, Atul Wassan and Madan Lal would play on the first two days in the Am-Am events.

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