- Virat Kohli and all other captains meet Queen Elizabeth II and Price Harry ahead of tournament opener
- The World Cup starts with hosts England taking on South Africa in the first match of the tournament at The Oval today
- England and India are the favourites to win the coveted trophy
- The Queen also met the teams including bowlers, batters and all-rounders who later joined a palace garden party
Even Queen Elizabeth II is getting in the cricket spirit ahead of the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup. Before the first match of the tournament, the Queen and Prince Harry met the captains of all 10 participating teams at the Buckingham Palace.
The captains from all ten #CWC19 sides met Queen Elizabeth II & the Duke of Sussex at Buckingham Palace earlier today. pic.twitter.com/ejorQW1dvN
— Cricket World Cup (@cricketworldcup) May 29, 2019
So who all were present?
The select gathering included: Virat Kohli (India captain), Eoin Morgan (England captain), Aaron Finch (Australia captain), Faf du Plessis (South Africa captain), Sarfraz Ahmed (Pakistan captain), Kane Williamson (New Zealand captain), Jason Holder (West Indies captain), Dimuth Karunaratne (Sri Lanka captain), Masrafe Mortaza (Bangladesh captain), and Gulbadin Naib (Afghanistan captain).
The Royal Garden Party event hosted by the Queen every year is extremely exclusive event and this time around along with Prince Harry, the royals hosted the Cricket World Cup teams to wish them luck ahead of the 46-day long tournament.
Now, while we definitely didn’t get an invite to the exclusive reception, we did hear of some juicy banter between the royals and the sportsmen.
At Buckingham Palace, Prince Harry took a dig Australia’s captain Aaron Finch, asking him: ‘You’re getting on a bit now, aren’t you? How long have you been playing?’
Speaking at the opening party, England captain Eoin Morgan said: “Hopefully, we will be great hosts and hopefully we will do everybody proud”.
But the various contenders seemed relaxed at the event. Virat Kohli said he was enjoying the atmosphere at the opening ceremony and spoke at length about the crowd support India receive in the United Kingdom.
“”It’s lovely to be here. We have such a huge fan base in England. The amount of people travelling from home as well. It’s great to see at every stadium we play at, at least 50 per cent of the crowd is Indian fans. For us, that’s a thing of pressure but a thing of pride as well. Hopefully, we have got to use to the crowd support to our advantage,” Kohli said.
