Smriti Mandhana has her justifiable share of followers however Indian girls’s staff’s vice-captain will need to have felt satisfied when she noticed a poster captioned ‘Mandhana The Goddess” and being proudly held aloft by a Chinese young man. But then Jun Yu is possibly a rare species in the Mandarin land, who loves the thwack of the wood meeting the leather. And the love for cricket made him travel 1200 kms from Beijing to Hangzhou in order to watch her “Goddess” in action.

And it all happened when he deep-dived into YouTube’s treasure of cricket videos and immediately got hooked to artistry of Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli and Mandhana, three of his favourites.

“I noticed Jasprit Bumrah’s spell towards Australia within the 2019 World Cup. I comply with each Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. They are the present greats of the sport. Then, there’s Suryakumar Yadav and Jaspreet Bumrah. Bumrah was extraordinary towards Australia within the 2019 World Cup,” Yu told when PTI caught up with him after the gold medal match.

So how did he learn about cricket? “Cricket classes are given in my college in Beijing. So, I do know just a little little bit of it,” said Yu.

In fact, Yu gave some interesting insight about the cricket arena for the Games, which was actually a flower garden only some time back.

“There will not be a lot cricket in China, only a few cricket venues, only a few folks play it and lots of even do not know the way it’s performed. Only Guangzhou, the place cricket was performed in the course of the 2010 Asian Games has a everlasting cricket stadium. It’s due to historic causes,” he said.

Yu was one among the motley crowd who turned up at the Pingfeng cricket field at the Zhejiang University of Technology campus here. The venue is not a proper cricket stadium.

“I do not play cricket even when I need to. There isn’t any correct floor additionally. Even this floor was a flower discipline earlier than the Asian Games. It was transformed right into a cricket discipline for the Asian Games. Just a few warm-up video games have been performed right here earlier than the Asian Games,” he said.

While he revers Tendulkar, Yu’s favourite cricketer is a New Zealander. “My favorite is Kane Williamson however Sachin Tendulkar is a legend of the sport,” Yu, who is doing his Masters Zoology in a University in Bejing, said.

But, Yu is not going to wait for the Indian men’s team to play in the Asian Games when the competition begins on Wednesday.

“I spent 1000 Yuan (INR 11,400) to come back right here from Beijing. I’ve my research and so I am unable to keep again for the boys’s event. I’m returning to Beijing on Tuesday,” he said.

A few of the Indians were also among the crowd, waving the national flag and cheering the Indian players.

One of them, Navneet Singh, who is from Delhi but currently residing in the outskirts of Hangzhou, had turned up with his friends to watch a cricket match for the first time in China.

“I’ve been right here for the previous one and half years, I’m doing enterprise in materials. This is the primary time we’ve watched a cricket match in China. Cricket will not be performed right here in China however we watched cricket on Indian channels.”

“We have a membership known as Hangzhou Cricket Club. We do apply each Sunday and even participate in tournaments in Hangzhou in addition to in Shanghai.” Another Indian Manoj, hailing from Mumbai but now settled here with family since 2003, has a textile export business.

“Chinese folks do not play cricket however you by no means know after the Asian Games, a few of them might begin doing that. We (Indians) have golf equipment right here and we typically play inter-city tournaments. There is all the time a event in Shanghai. It was stopped because of COVID-19 pandemic and has not began but after that.” He said there is no cricket-specific stadium in Hangzhou, except for this one.

“We need to journey to Shaoxing which is 70 km from right here and play there. But that can be a soccer stadium.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)