So, what is England talking about in these World Cup days? Not exactly cricket, if you please! It’s more about Donald Trump rubbing shoulders with the Queen of England as only the third US President in history to have been accorded a State welcome. Then there is Brexit, Theresa May, French Open, Wimbledon and even Baseball if you don't mind.
Royalty, howsoever irrelevant in modern times, commands enough interest for this nation to hook on to news around it and the likes of Trumps, Melanie or otherwise, making it their ultimate status symbol to be hosted by Buckingham Palace.
Not that this could make Donald Trump rise over common spats with uncommon venom, making England also talk about the President's dirty Twitter war with London mayor Sadiq Khan over the latter lamenting far-right politics besieging the world to many a dismay.
Then there is this entire gamut of emotion over Brexit and its major fallout of Prime Minister Theresa May resigning over the issue amid uncertainty and frayed tempers and apprehension of street violence, protest and demonstrations. To be holding a World Cup amid such woes is an achievement in itself, one would say.
Other than that, there is a lot more of the French Open on English imagination than the Cricket World Cup where hosts England fell to Pakistan just the other day. Flippantly, that 14 runs loss brought the focus somewhat back on a game that boasts of Britain as its mother country but has long lost the battle to football, rugby, tennis and even baseball now, the first ever match for which is being touted as sold out event already.
Wimbledon, too, is just around the corner and we all know how eagerly England awaits the strawberries and cream sporting summer in sylvan Grand Slam environs. Cricket, on the other hand, comes as an inconvenient overlap which will gain prominence in local charts only if the hosts reach, or look to reaching, the knockout round.
Within the tournament, it’s a week into the World Cup but the 10 teams vying for the top honours are still struggling to find their groove in an English summer punctuated by rain, gentle wind and a lot of fickle behaviour on-field, what with South Africa losing to Bangladesh, and Pakistan defeating the tournament favourites England after being blown out by the West Indians themselves.
The changed format has seen to it that there is even play, intense competition and many chances for the biggies to not be knocked out as any group stage blunder, a ka West Indies 2007. That also makes it the most open Cup in the history of cricket with India, England, South Africa, Australia, Pakistan, New Zealand and others sporting the first among equals potency in equal measure.
On the eve of India’s opening campaign in Southampton, against South Africa, news has not been so much about the game itself as about Team India riling the media by sending in local net bowlers for an international Press conference and the event being boycotted by angry journalists.
Gags, absenteeism, keeping the media waiting and closing ICC interaction windows summarily has become a fine art perfected from the Mahendra Singh Dhoni days and it seems now that it has become a routine, though undesired, dressing room tenet.
Seen with a glossed eye, this Narendra Modi kind of disdain for the media achieves nothing other than add the much-required syrup to a tournament hungry for front page bytes, side stories and some great matches to get going in real earnest. Over to India vs SA which may bring some juice into the proceedings.