England ODI skipper Eoin Morgan has praised his team-mate Jos Buttler’s decision to auction off his 2019 World Cup final shirt to raise funds for two London-based hospitals to combat COVID-19. England had managed to defeat New Zealand in the finals of the 2019 50-over World Cup by the barest of margins as both normal 50 overs-action and super over ended in a tie.
The Three Lions managed to win the trophy on the basis of boundary-countback rule, and it was Buttler who broke the stumps during the super-over, denying New Zealand their first World Cup win.
“It’s an incredibly kind gesture. We have seen people donate during the Australian bush fires; we saw Shane Warne auction his Baggy Green cap for a million dollars or something absolutely ridiculous,” ESPN Cricinfo quoted Morgan as saying.
“The impact that can have on many lives as opposed to sitting in someone’s drawer as a bit of a trophy… personally, it’s something I don’t understand. People have come out and said they would never do it. Justin Langer said he could never see a situation where he would do something like that but I find that hard to believe,” he added.
On Monday, Buttler posted a video message on Twitter and captioned the post as: “I’m going to be auctioning my World Cup Final shirt to raise funds for the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals Charity. Last week they launched an emergency appeal to provide lifesaving equipment to help those affected during the COVID-19 outbreak”.
The United Kingdom on Wednesday reported 563 deaths in a day, bringing the total number of patients in the country who died in hospitals to 2,352.
Some 29,474 people have now tested positive, a jump of 4,324 over the previous day, according to Al Jazeera.
The World Health Organisation had termed coronavirus as a pandemic on March 11.
Source: HindustanTimes