Cyclone set to put Michael Clarke’s return to Australia World Cup team on hold

Michael Clarke’s return to the Australia World Cup team looks like being put on hold with a potentially destructive cyclone set to hit the Queensland coast.

The storm, which will see winds of 285 kph hammering the north-east coast of the state, will bring torrential rain to Brisbane, where Australia are scheduled to play Bangladesh today.

With people in Brisbane and surrounding areas warned to stock up on supplies and volunteers handing out sandbags in the Queensland capital, it looks highly likely that the match at the Gabba will be washed out.

[ - Display of pace-bowlers an encouraging statement from Bangladesh ]

The teams were forced to practise indoors on Friday and if the Pool A match does not begin or is abandoned then they will be awarded a point each.

Bangladesh skipper Mashrafe Mortaza said that would probably help their chances of reaching the quarter-finals from Pool A.

“Yeah, but we are not looking for it,” he said. “If we can play good cricket here, definitely it would help us in the future against Sri Lanka, against New Zealand. So it is disappointing for us.”

It would definitely be a blow to Clarke, who missed Australia’s 111-run drubbing of England last weekend and has only played a warm-up against the UAE since sustaining a hamstring injury last December.

The match against Bangladesh was the deadline given to the batsman by selectors to prove his fitness for the campaign and Clarke said he was raring to go.

“I’ll put a lot of faith in my preparation and the work that I’ve done over the last eight-and-a-half weeks and I’m really confident that I’m 100 per cent fit to walk out on that field and help the team have success,” he said.

“But as much as we’d like to get out on the field, I think we need to realise how bad the cyclone is. I think I care most about the people of Queensland and making sure everybody is healthy and safe.”

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'Young girls thinking of big ideas'

Words come easy for aspiring writer Afra Al Muhairb. The business side of books, on the other hand, is entirely foreign to the 16-year-old Emirati. So, she followed her father’s advice and enroled in the Abu Dhabi Education Council’s summer entrepreneurship course at Abu Dhabi University hoping to pick up a few new skills.

“Most of us have this dream of opening a business,” said Afra, referring to her peers are “young girls thinking of big ideas.”

In the three-week class, pupils are challenged to come up with a business and develop an operational and marketing plan to support their idea. But, the learning goes far beyond sales and branding, said teacher Sonia Elhaj.

“It’s not only about starting up a business, it’s all the meta skills that goes with it -- building self confidence, communication,” said Ms Elhaj. “It’s a way to coach them and to harness ideas and to allow them to be creative. They are really hungry to do this and be heard. They are so happy to be actually doing something, to be engaged in creating something new, not only sitting and listening and getting new information and new knowledge. Now they are applying that knowledge.”

Afra’s team decided to focus their business idea on a restaurant modelled after the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Each level would have a different international cuisine and all the meat would be halal. The pupils thought of this after discussing a common problem they face when travelling abroad.

“Sometimes we find the struggle of finding halal food, so we just eat fish and cheese, so it’s hard for us to spend 20 days with fish and cheese,” said Afra. “So we made this tower so every person who comes – from Africa, from America – they will find the right food to eat.”

rpennington@thenational.ae