Clarke: Australian cricketers ‘sucked up’ to Kohli & Co to save IPL deals
MELBOURNE: Australian cricketers were so keen on protecting their lucrative IPL deals that they felt “scared” of sledging India captain Virat Kohli and his teammates during a particular period and instead “sucked up” to them, former skipper Michael Clarke has claimed.
India and Australia have had some memorable bilateral duels but Clarke felt that whenever the Australians would face India, their eyes would be trained on the cash-rich league which is played in April-may every year.
“Everybody knows how powerful India are in regards to the financial part of the game, internationally or domestically with the IPL,” Clarke told Big Sports Breakfast. “I feel that Australian cricket, and probably every other team over a little period, went the opposite and actually sucked up to India. They were too scared to sledge Kohli or the other Indian players because they had to play with them in April,” the World Cup-winning Australian skipper said dropping a bombshell.
Clarke believes that some of Australia’s ruthless on-field character got compromised because the top-10 draws at the IPL auctions gave an impression that they would never sledge Kohli.
“Name a list of ten players and they are bidding for these Australian players to get into their IPL team,” he said. “The players were like: ‘I’m not going to sledge Kohli, I want him to pick me for Bangalore so I can make my $ 1 million for my six weeks’. PTI
PUBLIC HEALTH EXPERTS SAY THAT WIDE AND AGGRESSIVE TESTING ALONG WITH SOCIAL DISTANCING IS THE ONLY WAY TO CONTROL THE OUTBREAK OF COVID-19. SOUTH KOREA HAS BEEN ABLE TO SLOW THE SPREAD THIS WAY
lowered the iron chain to allow him to drive away. The sample collection process took less than five minutes.
Another technician then wrapped the samples with cotton gauze, placed them in a larger cylindrical plastic container, which was stored in a thermocol box padded with ice p a c k s . Thi s p r o c e s s took another five minutes.
Not more than two people are allowed to occupy a car at the time of testing. If the car driver is not the patient, he or she must sit on the right side of the rear seat to facilitate the collection of swab samples. Patients receive their results through email and phone within 36 hours. The cost of the test is ~4,500.
To be sure, since the collection centre ran a mock collection process, an actual test was not performed for the purpose of this news report.
Arjun Dang, chief executive officer of Dr Dangs Lab, said that the drive-through facility was looking at serving 25-35 patients per day, with 20 minutes assigned to each patient. “It will operate from 8.30am to 4.30pm, but we may increase the timing if the demand increases,” he said, adding that about a dozen people had registered for the tests since appointments opened late Sunday afternoon.
Zoya Brar, CEO and founder, CORE Diagnostics, a private lab that has ICMR approval, said: “I appreciate that Dr Dangs has replicated what has been done in South Korea and other places to expand testing. On our end, we are focused on providing home collection since that is the lowest exposure for the patient to the outside world. We do this by default for all cases.”
While one other private lab chain said they were assessing the process to begin a similar testing procedure, another lab did not comment on the matter. A third lab said it had no immediate plans of starting a drivethrough testing facility.
Public health experts say that wide and aggressive testing along with social distancing is the only way to control the outbreak of the new disease. A massive testing effort, largely by drive-through centres, has been touted as a major reason why South Korea has been able to slow the spread of the highly contagious disease, which has killed at least 71,000 people worldwide.
At one point in March, South Korea had the second largest outbreak after China, but the country has since managed to flatten the curve of the infections. After an initial delay, the US has also begun wide drivethrough testing to control the pathogen that has infected over 330,000 people in the country.