Now Appu Army takes care of Lankan cricketers

The concept of Lal Samuels, a web-designer, the month-old Appu Army registers members through its website appuarmy.com and admits that he was inspired by the Barmy, Bharat and Swamy Army to think on similar concepts. Membership is open to all, including non-Lankan nationals and people who have knowledge about their cricket team.

“The name came from Appuharmy; it’s an ancient and famous name in Sri Lanka and almost everybody at home knows where it came from. I took out the ‘H’ from it and thought it would be a nice idea to go and support out cricketers. After all, they also deserve full-time supporters because the Sri Lankan team is one of the top teams in the world now,” says Samuels.

One of the foremost initiatives of this Sydney-based support concept is to merge all Lankan supporters in providing moral support to the team that has faced booing from the partisan Australian crowd.

The Appu Army made its debut at Sydney in the last match where the team lost badly to Australia but the strength of the supporters has been increasing since then. There’s a substantial number of peopleofSri Lankan descent residing Down Under and efforts are afoot to rope in sponsors to fund their travel with the team.

Sri Lankan skipper Mahela Jayawardene also expressed his happiness over the turnout at the ground. “It was a great atmosphere here and the crowds were were just brilliant. It was nice to see the team getting a dedicated support throughout the match,” he says.

So what if Richie Benaud or Channel Nine didn’t come down and attract their attention? Two wig-wearing lookalikes of Benaud did the job for a long interview! Their fancy dresses and colourful antics had turned the atmosphere into a carnival.

And as luck would have it, the cricket too turned into a similar spectacle with the Lankans going full blast at the Indians.

And this resounding eight-wicket win was celebrated in typical fashion—the entire lot took the Manuka Circle to ransom and held the traffic for a while they as it the dance routines. Now this is some competition in a true sense to all maverick Indian cricket team fans.