Members End: Steyn, Kohli bromance boils over

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Melbourne

SUSPICIOUS minds had cause to wonder exactly what Virat Kohli was on about in his press conference on Saturday when his hawkish eyes softened and he said of Dale Steyn, “Whenever I see him, he gives me the biggest hug.” Ag, sweet. Or perhaps not so much, if we put our minds into the gutter: “I’ll be looking to dominate him and he’ll be looking to dominate me.” Really, fellas, we don’t need to know that much about what you get up to when no-one’s looking.

THE Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), where SA and India are playing their World Cup match today, holds 100 024 people, and indications on Saturday were that that kind of capacity would be needed to accommodate the crowd that would turn up - almost all of them in support of India. So, there had to be something Freudian about an Indian reporter calling AB de Villiers “David” when she addressed a question to him at his presser on Saturday. If De Villiers represented “David” the other lot had to be “Goliath”.

MEN who try to get into the MCG members’ enclosure wearing “thongs, scuffs, dilapidated footwear, gumboots, moccasins and slippers” will find themselves turned away. Women who turn up in “brief or revealing tops (including bikini tops, halter neck tops, bare midriff)” will suffer the same fate. Children can relax, as anyone under 15 is “not required to meet the above standards”. But “it is expected that they will be presented in a neat and tidy manner”. There we were thinking Australia was a healthily egalitarian society. And what, pray tell, are “scuffs”?

AS a straight-talking Eastern Caper, Russell Domingo knows he needs to watch his words. But his guard slipped this week when he tried to remember who in his support staff had coached at previous World Cups. Having decided no-one had, he was reminded that Allan Donald served as New Zealand’s bowling coach in 2011. Domingo spluttered: “Allan! Oh, shit, sorry - how could I forget Allan.” Indeed, the sight of Donald sitting on a cooler box at the boundary’s edge as he plotted SA’s downfall in the Dhaka quarter-final is painfully imprinted on many memories.

FURTHER confirmation that Americans know bugger nothing about cricket was had this week during Afghanistan’s game against Bangladesh in Canberra. Barely 10 overs into the match, the US embassy in Kabul tweeted: “Congratulations to #Afghanistan for their win over #Bangladesh in the Cricket World Cup ...” Which brought forth a deluge of more than 250 retweets and 100 favourites. It took 40 minutes for the Yanks to fix their mistake. This they did with an acknowledgment of their “premature posting”, and adding that they “are still cheering for team Afghanistan”. Fine. You’re forgiven. But we’ll call that strike one ...

DARREN Sammy is one of the nicest men in cricket, so it would have come as a surprise that he and John Mooney were fined for swearing during Ireland’s wonderful four-wicket win over West Indies in Nelson this week. The problem was less the use of bad language than the fact that the words were captured by microphones and broadcast live to the world. But, as he sat down at his post-match press conference, Sammy undid the damage: “I’ve been handed a breach of of the code of conduct for a swear-word, so I’d like to apologise to the viewers for that - especially the young kids listening.”