... WHILE BEALEY DESE RVES CREDIT AS WELL
ENGLAND’S players often have family members on tour, usually choosing beautiful destinations such as Barbados, Melbourne or Cape Town to spend downtime with their nearest and dearest.
Rajkot on the other hand is one of the last places on the circuit where you’d invite your partner to come and spend time with you.
The meat-free and boozefree town in Gujarat is unlikely to rival Reykjavik, New York or Barcelona as a hot city-break destination anytime soon.
However, it’s where Stuart Broad will be making his 100th Test appearance next Wednesday and so it’s credit to Bealey Mitchell, his girlfriend, that she will be coming out to Rajkot to be there for the England bowler’s special moment.
Mitchell, a model, has never visited India before and, like everyone, will no doubt receive a culture shock when she arrives.
Sporting WAGS are often painted, unfairly in my eyes, as precious or high-maintenance but Mitchell deserves credit for slumming it in one of world cricket’s more roughand-ready outposts to support her boyfriend.
Alastair Cook, meanwhile, has named his recently-born daughter Isabelle. England’s Test captain returned home from the tour of Bangladesh to be at the birth of his second child last month and, after a few weeks of deliberations with wife Alice over Skype, the new arrival’s name was officially registered yesterday.