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Cricket shadows couture at fashion week
Waving mobile phones, four of India's top cricketers strutted on the runway at the fifth India fashion week.
Waving mobile phones, four of India's top cricketers strutted on the runway at the fifth India fashion week.
Bowlers Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan and Irfan Pathan and batsman and Mohammed Kaif stormed up the runway at a late Thursday night show organised by electronics giant Samsung, drawing resonating cheers and delighted whoops.
Wearing almost identical pants, tunics and stringy, layered jackets in white and powder blue, the cricketers donned shades as they stepped on to the runway.
As they took the shades off and struck a few poses, the crowd of Delhi socialites, who had gathered only to see this, went mad.
"It's a fun thing to do," said ace spinner Harbhajan Singh, who appeared without his turban, hair middle-parted and slicked into a neat ponytail on the runway.
For Kaif, Khan and Pathan, it was a break after the recent gruelling tour of Pakistan.
"I'm happy to be here," said fast-bowler Pathan, clearly the new poster boy of Indian cricket.
The cricketers are part of Team Samsung, a promotion by the South Korean company, which sponsors the Indian cricket team.
Grinning shyly, the foursome clearly took away all attention from the designers of the show -- Ranna Gill, Priyadarshini Rao, Aparna Chandra, and Shantanu and Nikhil.
As they pranced on the stage, waving at cheering fans, women in the audience grew hysterical, many of them almost bending double as they screamed for the cricketers.
"God, this is it!" exclaimed one woman. "I don't care about the fashion week any more, I've seen what I wanted to see."
