Namaste India! A traditional welcome for Kiwi cricket team

KANPUR: New Zealand cricket team arrived here on Monday evening. The visitors had landed at Amausi Airport in Lucknow around 3.30 pm from New Delhi. They reached Kanpur by bus under heavy police escort.

The hotel management welcomed the guests in the traditional way. The staff garlanded the players with rudraksh mala embedded with a silver coin depicting 500th Test and emblem of the two countries and placed vermilion 'tika' on the forehead of players and presented flowers.

Kiwi

skipper Kane Williamson cut a cake the hotel and presented pieces to team members. Thereafter, the players left the lobby and went straight to their rooms for rest.

New Zealand team will go for nets on Tuesday.

Members of the team are: Kane Williamson (captain), Trent Boult, Doug Bracewell, Mark Craig, Martin Guptill, Matt Henry, Tom Latham, James Neesham, Henry Nicholls, Luke Ronchi (Wk), Mitchell Santner, Ish Sodhi, RossTalyor, Neil Wagner, BJ Watling (Wk).

Schoolchildren will be invited : Host Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association (UPCA) will invite around 2,500 students daily to witness the Test match. According to sources, the district administration will invite 1,000 students of government and municipal corporation schools while UPCA would invite 1000 students of different public schools.

UPCA would provide laddoos and drinking water to students. Daily 500 kg laddoos would be distributed among the students. The organizers would distribute 500 T-shirts every day to mark the 500th Test celebration.

The students would be allowed to bring their tifin but that should be kept in paper box. All invited students would sit at C-3 stall just below the C-balcony stand.

If physically challenged kids express their wishes to witness the match, then they would also be invited and they would be sit in a separate box.

UP scorers for Test: Shailendra P Singh of Lucknow and Anirudh P Singh of Kanpur have been appointed official scorers for Test match.

Shailendra Pratap Singh was official scorer in the 100th Test match victory of Indian team at Green Park in 2009 against Sri Lanka.

Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar will be among 12 Indian captains to be felicitated before the commencement of match. Chandu Borde, Ajit Wadekar, Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, Dilip Vengsarkar, Kapil Dev, Krishnamachari Srikant, Mohammad Azharuddin, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Virendra Sehwag and Anil Kumble have been invited. All of them have confirmed their participation.

During the felicitation function, governor Ram Naik would be chief guest. Anurag Thakur, Ajay Shirke, president and secretary of BCCI and Anirudh Chaudhary will also be present on the occasion.


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