When Smriti Mandhana travelled to China with the Indian Women’s Cricket Team, she might have expected a fair few Indians from India and China to be present for the games and even a few Chinese spectators, intrigued and almost oblivious to the sport but what she definitely might not have expected would be a Chinese Cricket superfan travelling almost 1200kms to Hangzhou to watch ‘Mandhana The Goddess’ play her flawless game in the final.
Jun Yu is a rarity in the Chinese land who loves watching Cricket and it was this love which made him spend 1000 Yuan and brought him 1200kms away from Beijing to Hangzhou along with his now-viral poster which read, ‘Mandhana The Goddess’. When asked about how Yu became a fan, he replied saying that it all happened when he dived deep into the treasure trove of videos on YouTube and was immediately hooked on to Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli and Smriti Mandhana. However, Yu’s favourite international cricket is none other than Kane Williamson in spite of the fact that he revers Sachin Tendulkar.
“I saw Jasprit Bumrah’s spell against Australia in the 2019 World Cup. I follow both Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. They are the current greats of the game. Then, there is Suryakumar Yadav and Jaspreet Bumrah. Bumrah was extraordinary against Australia in the 2019 World Cup,” Yu told when PTI caught up with him after the gold medal match.
“Cricket lessons are given in my university in Beijing”
When asked about how did he learn about Cricket, “Cricket lessons are given in my university in Beijing. So, I know a little bit of it,” said Yu. Yu also went ahead to talk about the venues in China where can be played. “There is not much cricket in China, very few venues, very few people play it and many even don’t know how it is played. Only Guangzhou, where it was played during the 2010 Asian Games has a permanent \stadium. It’s because of historical reasons,” he said.
“I don’t play even if I want to. There is no proper ground also. Even this ground was a flower field before the Asian Games. It was converted into a field for the Asian Games. A few warm-up games were played here before the Asian Games,” he added.
Please, also have a look into : https://www.thetatva.in/sports/indian-womens-cricket-team-wins-first-ever-gold-in-asian-games-2023/20712/
