File photo of Paul Van Meekeren.
Cricket coming to a halt during COVID-19 pandemic has affected the livelihood of many local and first-class level cricketers in the country. While BCCI is still trying to figure out ways to get local cricket back on track, international cricket seems to be back in full swing with plenty international series, including a mouth-watering Australia-India series lined up next.
However, there’s a world of international cricket beyond the top 10 playing nations which consists of nations such as Holland, Namibia, Canada, Nepal, UAE among others. These countries often face off in second-tier tournaments across the world with the hope to sneak into the elite level like Afghanistan did in the recent past.
The road to glory for such nations is quite treacherous with funding coming hard and media coverage in next to negligible. And that’s why little is heard about plight of cricketers from such second-tier nation.
A tweet on Sunday by Dutch international Paul Van Meekeren, who last played against Zimbabwe in June 2019, gave an insight on how they are going about their life when the 27-year-old bowler made a startling revelation on Twitter that he is working as a food delivery guy to make his ends meet during the lockdown.
Retweeting a post by Espncricinfo, which mentioned that 2020 T20 World Cup would have kicked off today in Australia if not for the virus outbreak earlier this year, Meekeren expressed his sadness on not playing the tournament and instead deliver food to get through the winters.
The 27 years old has so far played five international games for Holland while representing the nation since the under-13 level. He also played in English county for Somerset.
