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| February 25, 2003 | Tuesday | Zul Hijjah 23, 1423 |
‘We are not on holiday’
EAST LONDON (South Africa), Feb 24: Canada’s players arrived in South Africa with a reputation for enjoying themselves on and off the pitch, but captain Joe Harris stresses his team are not at the World Cup just to have a good time.
“Everybody likes having a good time, and I don’t know why we get labelled,” Harris said on Monday, after his team arrived at East London airport for their Group ‘B’ match against tournament hosts South Africa on Thursday.
“All the teams I’ve seen go out at night and party a bit. For us to be labelled like that is pretty unfair.
“I think the reason we get all the attention is because we are an associate country and people expect us to be in bed at nine and disciplined.
“We’re grown men, we’re enjoying the country and we’re friends who’ve been together for a long time. We’re going to have fun — we’re not going to stop that — but we’re still here to play cricket very seriously.
“We’ve only had three or four days off in about four weeks — other than that we’ve trained,” Harris added.
After Canada’s upset 60-run win over Bangladesh in their first match, Harris said one of the secrets to performing above expectations was “a lot of socialising”.
“We know each other well...but that does not mean we do a lot of drinking — we go out for dinner and things like that,” he added.
Canada have lost three successive matches since their victory in the cup opener, and now play Group ‘B’ heavyweights South Africa and New Zealand before exiting the tournament on March 3.
They were humbled by Sri Lanka in Pietermaritzburg, where they were skittled for 36 — the lowest total in One-day International history.
But they bounced back in their next outing, against West Indies on Sunday, when John Davison blasted the fastest World Cup century of all time as the Canadians reached a respectable total of 202.
“We set our sights on winning the two games against Kenya and Bangladesh and, as far as I’m concerned, this tournament is not over for us,” said Harris.
“We’ve got one win and given the country a fair amount of exposure with that win.
“We want to be competitive and we want to put up a good fight against South Africa and New Zealand. You never know the results in the game of cricket — if we can do a good job and post a good target and then defend it well, anything can happen.
“We’re certainly not here on holiday,” he added.—Reuters
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