Tales of Rainy Day: Of Sridhar's 'Coke Joke', table tennis and darts on opening day of WTC Final

Southampton, June 18: It seems like Cristiano Ronaldo's Coca Cola snub at a media conference has caught the imagination of all and sundry with India fielding coach R Sridhar being certainly one among them.

After the washed out of the first day of the World Test Championship final, Sridhar who addressed the media, showed his lighter side before the start of the interaction. Finding a Coca-Cola bottle on the table, India's fielding coach said in jest: "Do I remove it? What happens to price if I remove it?"

He was referring to a Ronaldo media interaction where the Portugal captain was seen removing the Coke bottles and urging people to drink water. A global sporting megastar, Ronaldo's act had reportedly led to the soft drink major losing around USD 4 billion.

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With rain washing out the entire day and nothing much to do, off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin along with physios Nitin Patel and Yogesh Parmar and video-analyst Hari were seen enjoying a game of darts in a video uploaded by BCCI.tv.

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Some of the others enjoyed a game of table tennis, according to Sridhar as they killed time on a day when no action was possible. Asked who keeps the group entertained during this kind of a frustrating day, Sridhar named skipper Virat Kohli, senior spinner Ashwin and flamboyant keeper Rishabh Pant as the three individuals.

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"As far as the entertainers are concerned, I think, there are quite a few and well entertainers in the good sense. So there is a lot of people who can do mimicry, they crack good jokes. "I mean Virat Kohli is terrific in taking care and giving us a good laugh, Ash (Ravichandran Ashwin) in his own way and we have Rishabh (Pant) who has got the loudest laughter and he keeps us in good humour whenever we are in a group," the fielding coach said.

"So we have many who keep us in good humour while we are waiting for the match to start, so that there is no shortage of buzz and laughter in the dressing room while we are awaiting."