By Mohammad Isam

Players arriving for Twenty20 matches in a helicopter is an often-used gimmick. But for Shahriar Nafees, Mushfiqur Rahim and Alok Kapali, a chopper will actually be necessary to get them to the logo unveiling ceremony of the Bangladesh Premier League on time.

The three players are icon players for their respective sides in the upcoming Premier League but will all be involved in matches in the Dhaka Premier Division Cricket League on December 29, and could have less than an hour to make it to the Radisson hotel in Dhaka for the Premier League event.

Mushfiqur will be playing at the Fatullah Cricket Stadium, 40km south of Dhaka, for Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi Club while Nafees and Kapali will face off at the BKSP, to the northwest of Dhaka, for Prime Doleshwar Sporting Club and Gazi Tank Cricketers respectively. Since the logo unveiling programme begins at 6:00pm and the Premier Division matches could end as late as 5:30pm, the commute from both venues to Hotel Radisson by road will be impractical given Dhaka’s traffic situation, which is particularly bad on Thursday afternoons.

"It is practically impossible for them to reach the event on time, so we will have a helicopter pick them up from one ground and then go to the other. They will be dropped off at the Army Stadium near the hotel," BCB media committee chairman Jalal Yunus said.

The players will still have a mile to cover after arriving at the Army Stadium. Since hardly anything moves on the Airport Road at that hour, they may be late for the ceremony anyway.

A statue of Shane Warne has been unveiled outside the MCG © Getty Images

It’s hard to imagine that Shane Warne could look any more bronzed than he does at the moment. But it has been achieved by the sculptor Louis Laumen, whose statue of Warne has been unveiled outside the MCG. The first in a series of statues to be known as the Avenue of Legends, the Warne likeness sits outside the members’ entrance.

Warne was on hand on Thursday to reveal the sculpture, which he had not seen himself until the grand unveiling. The statue shows Warne in his classic delivery stride, ready to let rip with a legbreak. “It looks like a legspinner,” Warne said of his action, “so Daryll [Cullinan] would struggle with it.”

Back in 1997, a much chubbier Warne was unimpressed when asked by a journalist at a touring Madame Tussauds exhibition in Melbourne if he wished he looked a bit more like his slimmer wax likeness. The MCG statue shows Warne at his playing weight, complete with earring, and Warne joked that “It’s 300kg, the statue, so I’m a little bit lighter at 78kg.”

Warne’s fiancée Liz Hurley was at the ceremony, along with the couple’s collective four children, and Warne’s parents and brother Jason, a man who Warne admits he has still never dismissed in the nets. Warne reflected on visiting the MCG with Jason when they were kids, heckling Norman Cowans as he ran through Australia’s batting line-up in the thrilling 1982-83 Ashes Test, won by England by three runs.

As a player at the ground, his highlights included a hat-trick against England when Devon Malcolm came out wearing so much padding “he looked like Robocop”, but it was an early MCG memory that Warne said stood out the most.

“I think back to 1992 Boxing Day Test match, the West Indies needed about 300 or so that day to win,” he said. “Phil Simmons got a hundred and played really well. Just before lunch I bowled a flipper to Richie Richardson and bowled him. We won the Test match and I got 7 for 52. It was a pretty amazing experience. I remember Dad down in the dressing rooms with Molly Meldrum and Merv squirting champagne and David Boon singing the song. It’s nearly 20 years ago now.”

Time flies, but the statue means Warne will be forever immortalised at the MCG.

Anyone who thinks a cricketer’s life is easy and slow-paced should ask Mushtaq Ahmed. The former Pakistan leggie, currently a part of the England support staff, is now busy organising his wedding banquet – 18 years after he got married! Mushy, as he’s known, married Uzma Jabeen in December 1993 but was soon involved in a whirlwind of cricket, beginning with a home series against Zimbabwe. Four children later, it seems, they’ve finally decided, on the advice of family elders, to have the walima, an important part of Islamic wedding rituals. The kids will all be part of the ceremony, to be held in Lahore on Boxing Day, and so will a lot of team-mates who missed out on the feasting back then – including Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Moin Khan and Inzamam-ul Haq. Better late than never, says Mushy. Perhaps the missus should demand a well justified second honeymoon too!

Matthew Hayden made a splash with his promotion of the Mongoose during the IPL but he’s gone back to the old-fashioned bat for the Big Bash League. Well, not quite. Old-fashioned bats don’t cost five-figure sums, which is what Hayden’s bat is worth, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald. The four bats Hayden will use during the BBL have their backs painted by a Tiwi Island artist. And when the tournament is over, they will be auctioned to raise money for a school.

Maybe it’s the spirit of the season, maybe it’s age, maybe it’s just empathy, but when Harbhajan Singh asks critics to lay off Ricky Ponting, it does raise eyebrows. "I don’t think Ponting is finished and I think people are making a big mistake by writing him off," Harbhajan said in response to calls for Ponting to be dropped for the upcoming Test series against India. "Australian fans should not put pressure on Ponting. He is only one innings away from finding his top form."

Bowler and batsman have previous, of course; Ponting was Harbhajan’s bunny when they were both in their prime and the offpsinner was at the centre of the controversial Sydney Test four years ago that almost led to the tour being called off. Now they are in almost the same boat - Harbhajan is out of the side, dropped for this tour because of poor form, and Ponting’s career is clearly in its last few overs. The true test of the new-found love will come when the festive season is over - or if Harbhajan and Ponting come face to face in the ODIs.

Shane Warne’s cooking injury, a burnt finger that has put in doubt his Big Bash participation, has made him one of many who will suffer kitchen-related incidents over the festive season.

Springing on the opportunity for some publicity, the London Fire Brigade (LFB) have asked Warne to help push their Christmas safety campaign.

Following his accident, which Warne revealed on Twitter, he posted another message: “Ps no more trying to be a master chef! Stop and by a bacon roll on the way to the ground next time - silly Shane !"

And the LFB responded: “@warne888 we agree you should have got a bacon roll instead! Back our xmas 'Have a takeaway' campaign.”

Ron Dobson, the LFB commissioner, said: “I’m not for one minute suggesting that Shane Warne had too much to drink when he burnt his hand but we know that many people will start fires or have accidents in their kitchen this Christmas after having a few too many drinks. If you’ve had too much to drink, don’t go home thinking you’re on MasterChef.

“Too many fires start when someone has passed out, leaving a pizza in the oven or a pan on the hob and it can be fatal. If people are planning a big night out, they should plan on having a takeaway on the way home. Shane should back our campaign so that he can help prevent other people being as silly as him.”

Those watching Australia’s pre-Test nets at the Bellerive Oval on Thursday could have been forgiven for think Waqar Younis was giving the Australian batsmen a workout. It was in fact umpire Aleem Dar, a dead ringer for former Pakistan fast bowler, who was sending down a few fast ones at Michael Clarke and David Warner. You could call it an unequal battle, given the fact that Dar is third umpire for the Test, and he was treated with due deference – Warner even curbing his instincts to pull the couple of bouncers he received.

Dar, officially the world’s best umpire, is more than a Sunday bowler. He bowled legspin in a 12-year first-class career in Pakistan and has a full-fledged Astroturf nets on the roof of his house. But bowling in the Australia nets is possibly tempting fate, the rate at which Aussie bowlers are getting crocked - there could be a strong temptation to pull in a Waqar lookalike and hope for the best.

India’s love-hate relationship with Andrew Symonds continues, with the former Australia allrounder becoming the latest participant in Bigg Boss, the Indian version of the reality show Big Brother. Symonds was vilified in India for his role in the ‘Monkeygate’ affair four years ago but redeemed himself somewhat by helping Deccan Chargers win the second season of the IPL. Now he puts it all on the line with his stint in Bigg Boss House, where his fellow inmates includes an American porn star.

There’s no talk (yet) of Harbhajan Singh, the other protagonist of Monkeygate, joining the fun but the spinner’s exclusion from the Australia tour offers hope of an intriguing alternative to the on-field action. Symonds, though, is upbeat about the state of their relations. “We are great friends,” he told rediff.com. “We party, we get sloshed.” The Indian cricketer he’d like to see in the house: Rohit Sharma. And his expectations of Bigg Boss? “An opportunity to showcase Australian culture, which involves fun activities like barbecues and throwing people into the pool.” Just as well many in India have already seen the other side of Australian culture, most recently via the Masterchef series.

Having become two of Sri Lanka’s leading cricketers of all time, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene now hope to use their culinary tastes to become some of the country’s best restaurateurs.

The pair have teamed up with restaurateur Dharshan Munidasa to open the “Ministry of Crab” at the Old Dutch Hospital in Colombo, the Island reported. The restaurant will serve the best of Sri Lanka’s sea food and a signature dish of export-quality crabs, not usually available in Sri Lanka.

Former captain Sangakkara has been interested in food for a long time and during a spell in England with Warwickshire, cookery shows became his favourite TV programmes.

Another former Sri Lanka captain had dabbled in the culinary world. Aravinda de Silva entered the restaurant business with an establishment specialising in Sri Lankan cuisine but has since disposed of his interest.

The financial imbalance between cricket and other sports in India is well documented. Cricketers are revered for the most part, while other sportsmen tend to go by unnoticed. The scene at the Holkar Stadium in Indore, ahead of the fourth ODI between India and West Indies, was a case in point.

The Anand XI Football Club, winners of Indore's top football league, were hired on Monday to clean seats at the cricket stadium in preparation for the one-dayer. The 15 footballers are being paid Rs 3 per seat for their services, Mumbai Mirror reported. "We have taken up this job to help buy football kits," the team's coach, Ramchandra Chauhan, told the newspaper. "Most players on the team come from extremely poor backgrounds and have no option but to double up as daily wage labourers to make ends meet."

The Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association media manager, Ashok Kumat, said the state board did not know that the hired helpers were footballers. “The association has hired professional cleaners for the job of sprucing up the stadium. As far our knowledge goes, this [that a football team was hired] isn't true.”

Monty Panesar has looked slightly out of place a few times during his career – at extra cover for example – but there may have been a few giggles when he lined up alongside the New South Wales Waratahs rugby team for a training session.

Panesar was put through fitness drills alongside 19 stone, six foot four, Wycliff Palu, before having a sledge strapped to his waist and running six stone weights up and down the pitch. No sweat for Monty. “That was a good training session actually,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald. “I was trying to keep up with a couple of the guys there and it was good, I really enjoyed it.”

''I think more than anything when you're cross-fertilising in sports it stimulates your own thinking," said Panesar, who is playing for Randwick-Petersham in Sydney. "'The [Waratahs'] professionalism and their fitness levels are really high and … I've been to their building and seen the facilities, it's just amazing to see what they provide and the facilities they've got and how professional they are in terms of their own sport.''

If he gets a chance to face Pakistan next month they'd better watch out.