Ice cricket 2018: Cricketing greats like Virender Sehwag, Shahid Afridi, Mahela Jayawardene, Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis on Thursday took to St Moritz to entertain people of Switzerland with their talent of cricket. The legends have once again donned the cricket kit to play a T20 match of ice cricket. In a unique tournament, Diamonds XI led by Virender Sehwag will lock horns against Royal XI in Switzerland. They will play a friendly match against each other in a frozen lake in St Moritz, Switzerland, which will also have the Swiss Alps in the background.
Cricket at St Moritz has been played by amateur cricketers since 1988, but this is for the first time that professional players like Lasith Malinga, Mahela Jayawardene, Mohammad Kaif amongst others will embrace it with their talent and skills. The match will be played on February 8 and 9, 2018. As per the Indian Express report, the star players will be grossing a great amount of $ 40,000-50,000 for the two encounters.
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The match started at 3:30 PM and was live aired on Sony ESPN and Sony Six HD. It will be a T20 format match with the boundary line for the game being 30 meters. Lake St Moritz is frozen for six months. However, there are other tournaments that are sports that are played on the frozen lake. It includes horse racing and other adventure sports. The match is being played 5910 feet above sea level. The lake is frozen for six months and can sustain weight for over 200 tons of weight. Moreover, instead of the cricket pitch, the players will play on an artificial turf carpet.
Diamond XI Playing XI: Virender Sehwag (c), Mohammad Kaif, Lasith Malinga, Michael Hussey, Mahela Jayawardene, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Tillakaratne, Andrew Symonds, Joginder Sharma, Ramesh Powar, Rohan Jain
Royal XI Playing XI: Jacques Kallis (c), Shahid Afridi, Shoaib Akhtar, Nathan McCullum, Daniel Vettori, Grant Elliott, Monty Panesar, Graeme Smith, Owais Shah, Abdul Razzaq, Jacques Kallis, Matt Prior, Aidan Andrews